The kind disposition, which has been generally evinced, to advance the interest of the Society, has had a salutary and cheering influence. Many interesting and instructive communications have been received, and valuable donations of books, seeds, and plants have been made by generous foreigners, and by citizens of the United States. A liberal offer of co-operation has been promptly tendered in both hemispheres, and great advantages are anticipated from a mutual interchange of good offices.
A library of considerable extent has been formed, containing many of the most celebrated English and French works on Horticulture, several of which are magnificent. The apartments for the accommodation of the Society have been partially embellished with beautiful paintings of some of our choice native varieties of fruits; and by weekly exhibitions, during eight months of the year, of fruits, flowers, and esculent vegetables ;--by awarding premiums for proficiency in the art of gardening, and the rearing of new, valuable, or superior products;--by disseminating intelligence, and accounts of the proceedings of the Society at its regular and special meetings, through the medium of the New England Farmer; and by an annual festival, and public exhibition of the various products of Horticulture, an interest has been excited, and a spirit of inquiry awakened, auspicious to the Institution, while a powerful impulse has been given to all the branches of rural industry, far beyond our most sanguine hopes.
To foster and extend a taste for the pleasant, useful and refined art of Gardening, the time appears to have arrived for enlarging the sphere of action, and giving
