FRUIT AND VEGETABLE COMMITTEE, MARCH 23. xlvii 



Captain Carstairs (gr. Mr. Ross) sent Apple ' Mottled Russett ' 

 — of very fair flavour, but somewhat lacking in quality. 



Messrs. Lane & Son, Berkhamsted, sent Apple * St. John's 

 Seedling,' which too much resembled ' Hormead Pearmain.' 



Mr. E. Holder, Grosvenor Cottage, Bath, sent a seedling 

 Apple somewhat in the way of ' Court of Wick.' It was crisp, 

 juicy, and of fair flavour, but had possibly been gathered too 

 soon. 



Fruit and Vegetable Committee, March 23, 1897. 



Philip Crowley, Esq., in the Chair, and eighteen members 

 present. 



After the minutes of the last meeting had been read the Chair- 

 man called on the Secretary, the Rev. W. Wilks, to move a resolu- 

 tion. The Secretary, rising, said : — " Mr. Chairman and gentlemen 

 of the Fruit Committee, — We have all of us, I am sure, come here 

 to-day with very contradictory feelings. We one and all want 

 to get up and bear testimony to the great loss which this 

 Committee has sustained since last we met ; and yet we one and 

 all shrink from doing so from a feeling (which I share with 

 everyone of you) that there is not one among us capable of doing 

 justice to the theme. In one sense, then, I shrink from the sub- 

 ject as from a task too hard for me to perform— a burden I am 

 unequal to bear ; whilst, in another sense, I feel that the duty 

 which the Chairman has deputed to me is the greatest honour 

 he could confer upon me. Gentlemen, we have lost one whom 

 all who knew him at all intimately loved sincerely ; whom all at 

 this table reverenced ; whom every English gardener honoured ; 

 whom all pomologists in every country of the world looked up to 

 and respected as the chief authority on fruit — our dear friend 

 and coadjutor Dr. Hogg — the founder of this Committee — who 

 has been taken from us. But what a splendid work and what a 

 grand example he has left behind ! Seldom has it been given to 

 a man to reduce to' such (comparatively speaking) perfect order 

 such an absolute chaos as he found British fruit description and 

 nomenclature. The greatness of his work in this respect is not 

 yet fully realised. A Scotchman by birth, and like so many 

 Scotchmen, of untiring energy and dogged perseverance ; a man 

 of transparent honesty of purpose and of blunt outspoken truth- 



