HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY.

Evening Star, Issue 8773, 14 March 1892, Page 3

HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY.

TO THB BDITOB. lu your issue of Saturday you publish a letter from “Observer” re the allotment of prize for a tray of fruit at the recent show, in which “ Observer ” accuses judges, committee, and even your special reporter, of suffering from deficient vision in seeing preserved fruit in the tray, where he says there was none. Then the size of the tray is a different matter, He does not dispute the size of the tray, but says that, looking at the programmes—which, by-the-bye, were not published until two days prior to the show—he found that the size of the tiay had been altered by six inches, though no notice had been given beyond the laggard programme. Now it is very clear to me that “ Obterver” must have been observing both fruit and programmes through very highly colored spectacles, as ho sees things very differently from any other ordinary individual. For, in the first instance, the preserved fruit was in the tray ; and, in the second instance, there was no programme published two days prior to the show, either laggard or otherwise. The schedule and prize list of the society was published at the beginning of the season for all tho shows during the year, and I may say that the recent show was the third (or autumn) show of the season. And in this schedule it is plainly stated that tho size of the tray is not to exceed 3ft by 2ft at page 25. And if we look at page 25 of the previous year we will also find it plainly set forth that the size of the tray must not exceed 3ft by 2ft. So, if “ Observer ” would use plain glass spectacles, which I would strongly recommend him to do when next he writes to the papers on subjects of which he appears to know very little, he will see that Mr Macquaid had at

least two years’ instead of tho two days’ notice of the alteration of size of tray, which “ Observer ” tries to make out.—l am, etc., A Lover of Fair Play. Dunedin, March 14.