INDIA]SrA nOKTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 303 



no trees at all, where we find the nursery is in too close proximity with 

 an infested orchard to let the trees be set out without some further protec- 

 tion to the people who buy them— suppose we find a tree in a nursery row, 

 or a block of, say 100,0<X) trees, the tree is located, and then the man will 

 begin to worli around and around, gradually working outward, looking 

 carefully for other infested trees. If we find another within ten feet away, 

 then we condemn everything within ten feet of the original tree, and it 

 does not make any difference whether we have found a scale on it or 

 not, it is condemned and burned. Then we keep on going farther out. 

 If we find nothing beyond that, nothing more is condemned, but before that 

 nursery stocli can go into the market it must be fumigated under the 

 direction of some one connected with the department and ordered to over- 

 see the inspection. As a further protection, if we can find absolutely noth- 

 ing, we insist upon that fumigation in a room constructed particularly for 

 the purpose. 



Some of you may think the way to do, if you find one tree, is to con- 

 demn the nursery and have it all burned. You would not think that way 

 if you were in the business. A business you have spent a lifetime to 

 build up can be wrecked in a short time. I can wreck it inside of a 

 week. But the owner of the nursery has rights, and he has a right to jus- 

 tice. After we have cleared up everything that would be apt to endanger 

 his patrons, then his stock, before it can be sent out, must be treated in 

 this way; and I want to say right here that hydrocyanic acid gas is one 

 of the most deadly poisons known to the chemist— we use cyanide of 

 potassium and sulphuric acid, which you must all know is a very deadly 

 poison, and combining the two and water forms a gas that is practically 

 as deadly as the two ingredients put together. 



I can illustrate, perhaps, a little to show you what the effect would be. 

 After this stuff has been kept in this room with this gas for a certain 

 length of time the doors are thrown open and ventilators are thrown down, 

 and everybody is forbidden to go into the room for a certain time, from 

 twenty minutes to half an hour. In one place a colored man thought that 

 half an hour was a little too long. He did not want to wait so long, and 

 he went in to get some trees, and he suddenly fell over. They pulled the 

 fellow out, and after a while he came to, and they asked him w^hat he 

 was doing. He said, well, he didn't know; he got in there and all at 

 once it got dark, and that was all he knew about it. So from that you 

 can understand the deadly nature of the gas. 



As to the way we use it, we have been very careful. No man ought 

 to use it unless he has the nature of it thoroughly explained to him, and 

 no one but a careful man ought to have anything to do with it whatever. 

 I find that the men who are very careful with it, but w^ho work with it 

 continually, complain of headaches due to the effect from the fumes. We 

 wanted to avoid that, so we had these houses made with a slatted floor, 

 and with an aperture perhaps that large square (indicating). Then 



