16 BULLETIN OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 



cussion of their relative merits and characteristics, and to 

 an examination of the home-products of land and sea, by 

 such specialists as Dr. Holmes, Prof. Jeffries Wyman, 

 Dr. B. A. Gould, Rev. E. C. Bolles, Caleb Cooke, the 

 Messrs, Scudder, Morse, Hyatt, Tracy, Phippen and 

 Bicknell. Frequent exhibitions of art work have been 

 afforded the public under our auspices, but perhaps the 

 salient feature in the career of the Institute, after the field- 

 meetings, has been the series of famous fruit and flower 

 shows, sometimes held weekly, which for many years it was 

 enabled to sustain. No neighborhood had more reason 

 than this to boast of the affluence of its private gardens. 

 Native and exotic fruits and flowers loaded the Society's 

 tables in exquisite profusion, when our departments of 

 horticulture and of botany were under the patronage of 

 Francis Putnam, John C. Lee, Joseph S. Cabot, Stephen 

 C. Phillips, John Bertram, Charles Hoftman, Ezekiel H. 

 Derby, Thomas Spencer, Robert Manning, John Fiske 

 Allen, George D. Phippen, and Ives and Ropes and Oliver 

 and Emerton and Rogers and Russell and Upton of Salem, 

 and Oakes of Ipswich, and Perry of Bradford and 

 Nichols and Fowler of Dan vers, and Prescott of Lynn, 

 and Appleton of Gloucester. Just as the scientist ceases, 

 after a while, to be content with broad generalizations 

 which embrace a continent, and gives himself over to pursue 

 with microscopic scrutiny the problems of some section 

 nearer home, whose secrets are within his reach, — just 

 as the specialist, in despair of mastering the whole field 

 of human knowledge, applies himself with unimpaired 

 activity to some tempting nook which he can make his 

 own, — just so the Institute has striven to stimulate in 

 Essex County a healthy appetite for local things, — to create 

 a literature having a strong local flavor, not without its 

 interest to the outside world — for the county is a rare 



