BO 



AKKALS OF HORTICTTLTTTBE. 



upon exhibits of flowers and plants during the first month, and 

 there were continuous exhibits of fruits through the full term 

 of the Exposition. The Horticultural and Floricultural jury 

 did not organize, however, until the last of July. 



"While the jurors were officially instructed more than 

 once, after the jury had been organized, to grant awards only 

 to articles of superior merit, and the printed instructions to the 

 jurors stated that 'awards shall be granted upon specific 

 points of excellence or advancement formulated in words by a 

 board of judges or examiners, who shall be competent experts/ 

 there was no means provided for determining a standard 

 (excepting a memorandum for fruits, without an official 

 imprint) on which a juror could base a report so that the 

 awards should have anything like uniformity. It was unreason- 

 able to expect that the jurors, many of whom were obliged 

 to make their examinations independently and long before the 

 organization of the jury, would be able to arrive at anything 

 like uniform conclusions. The result was that when the 

 reports were presented to the jury they varied so radically that 

 a considerable amount of time was wasted in bringing them to 

 something like a uniform basis, and in order to make any 

 progress it was necessary to submit to what appeared to many 

 to be essentially wrong decisions. To expect all members of a 

 jury, including foreigners and men who were not accustomed 

 to expressing their ideas in writing, to make a clear and con- 

 cise written statement of the merits of the different exhibits 

 of the same character, so that this form of award would be of 

 value, was hardly practicable, and to expect a clerk to work over 

 their statements (or supply a statement) was even less 

 practicable. 



" To select a lot of jurors without knowing if experts were 

 represented, for all classes of exhibits, and then to send them, 

 without notice, at irregular intervals, to the chief clerks of the 

 juries who were expected to assign them to duty, and when the 

 exhibits they were most competent to judge were, perhaps, 

 already assigned to others, — this was certainly not the best way 

 to secure the most expert judge for each class. When almost 

 every rule for the entry of exhibits was violated, and the judges 

 were obliged to hunt over acres of ground to find an exhibit, 

 then, very likely, make extensive corrections in the list of 

 articles, and supply many missing names, it became an exceed- 

 ingly difficult matter to pass correct judgment. In addition 

 to this lack of a standard for comparison and of a properly 

 organized and executed system, judges were expected to sign, 

 in duplicate, a card for each item in an exhibit; but when the 

 jurors realized that some of them were likely to be compelled 



