175 



ornamental trees, to be had at any nursery ! The de- 

 cline of the taste for the Lombardy poplar is a striking 

 instance of the fickleness of the public for fancy arti- 

 cles. Here was a tall, graceful and rapid growing foreigner 

 discarded almost universally — and seen now only here and 

 there, forlorn, broken by the winds and desolate. The New- 

 buryport turnpike still possesses a few of what seemed once 

 to have been an. avenue, and some hill tops in Essex 

 County are marked in the distant horizon by the taper finger of 

 a single tree of that species. Our beautiful Common paraded 

 files of them on its sides, vegetable sentinels, always at their 

 posts in all weathers. What better emblems too of the mili- 

 tary and precise position, and emblematical of the purposes of 

 the parade ground. A single arrowy poplar rising amidst a 

 clump of elms or of other trees is a picture of beauty in arbor- 

 iculture seen only here and there more by chance than design. 

 May the day be distant when the Lombardy poplar shall 

 become extinct; and we gratefully preserve the record of the 

 ^' 12 " individuals with the " 12 large leaf" ones, which were 

 found in the goodly company of delicious peaches and noble 

 plums of 1799. 

 SaleMj 1857. 



Capt. Nathaniel E. Atwood, of Provincetown, was then 

 introduced to the meeting, and offered a few remarks 

 relating to the spawning, &c. of certain fishes. He first alluded 

 to some of the peculiarities in the sexes of different kinds of 

 fishes, as difference in weight, also other distinguishing fea^^ 

 tures. The Cod, Haddock, Hake and Pollock were mentioned 

 as examples illustrating various difierences in the sexes. He 

 never saw a very large male Cod ; Hake and Pollock of the 

 same sex, are marked by the opposite characteristic. He was 

 of the opinion that bony skeleton fishes generally, deposit their 

 eggs before they are fecundated : but he understood that 

 Agassiz had discovered that, in other instances, this was done 

 before depositing the spawn. The Cod deposit their spawn in 



