Pomological Convention. 525 
were represented, and a much greater combination of general in- 
formation from remote localities existed, than on the present 
occasion, and which after having made great and important pro- 
gress in the proposed investigations, had adopted as their perma- 
nent title " The North American Pomological Convention," with 
a decision that they would reassemble the ensuing year under the 
same auspices during the period of the State Fair. 
In the initiatory proceedings, Mr. Walker, an Englishman, who 
is the president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, was 
made chairman of the committee for nominating permanent 
officers, and whom could he possibly think of for president of the 
convention, but the person who had preceded him in this present 
station, and who had recently(forfear of a removal, it is whispered,) 
resigned in his favor. But the most singular circumstance of all 
is the fact that Mr. Downing, who is a resident of the state of 
New York, was sent into the convention as a delegate from the 
Massachusetts Horticultural Society, being appointed by the 
wire-pullers, and acting always in concert with them. This ap- 
pointment, however, and the other honors confered upon him by 
Mr. Wilder after he became installed as permanent president, can 
only be viewed as a proper return, " quid pro quo,'' for the abject 
fawning hitherto evinced by Mr. Downing, and especially for his 
biography of that gentleman in a recent number of the Horticul- 
turist. 
In selecting Mr. Downing as a delegate, it is however some- 
what mortifying to know that the clique in that society discarded 
the name of C. M. Hovey, a gentleman far superior to Mr. Down- 
ing in general knowledge on Horticulture and Pomology, and who 
has evinced by his original and tinplagiarised writings during a 
long course of years, that he is far better acquainted with both these 
subjects than any other member of the society. He, it appears, 
has been doomed and set aside, on account of his unconquerable 
independence of character, for Haman is morlijied that Mordecai 
vnll do him no reverence. 
It will be seen by the proceedings that the Massachusetts dele- 
gation usurped all the important business of the convention, and 
that its entire doings may be termed a wholesale attempt to foist par- 
ticular men upon the community, crowned with Pomological glory, 
in order that certain nurserymen, (Messrs. Wilder and Walker 
being both embarked in that business) may command precedence 
over all others in the sale of their trees and scions, as they already 
do in the enormous prices they sell them at. 
In fact Messrs. Wilder, Walker, and Downing, backed by a 
powerful delegation from Massachusetts, controlled the whole of 
the proceedings from the outset on the principle of "I tickle you 
tickle you and you tickle me." 
The labors of the Convention have resulted in rendering but 
