BOARD OF HORTICULTURE 175 



Board of Horticulture in this one matter of keeping the tuber moth out of the 

 State of Oregon, has resulted in the saving of millions of dollars. The average 

 grower, or in fact any one not entirely conversant with tlie subject, can hardly 

 appreeiate the extreme danger to the potato crop from this source. The rapidity 

 with whieh the tuber moth niultiplies is astounding. An experiment made in the 

 pathologist's office in Jackson County with two tubers infested with the moth, 

 showed how rapid tlie protluction was. In a comparatively short time, from these 

 two tubers, over two hundred moth and larvae were hatched. If the State Board 

 of Horticulture had done nothing eise this item of preventing the introduction of 

 the tuber moths would be sufficieut to have paid thousands of times over for all 

 the money spent by this Organization." 



A function which particularly applies to the secretary is in addition to solicit- 

 ing books, pamphlets, periodicals and other documents containing valuable Infor- 

 mation relating to horticulture and preserve the same, actual conditions and pro- 

 gress of horticulture, etc., to answer all letters from within the state from grow- 

 ers, about insec-ts and fungous disease, giving füll Information and advice, and 

 from without the State inquiries about fruit growing, best sections adapted for 

 various fruits, etc., which in itself is valuable as it acts as immigrative literature, 

 bringing to our state many intelligent horticulturists. 



We have also received many letters from other states for copies of our laws 

 and quarantine, as well as modes of procedure and work by this Board which 

 have heen adopted verbatim by them with ten fold the amount of appropriation 

 that is allowed to us, which speaks very well, as the highest compliment that can 

 be paid to any one is the copy of his ways, actions and work. 



The clean merchantable fruits, the remunerative prices received by the grow- 

 ers, the high plane and volume which our fruits have attained, second to no other 

 industry, in our State, is undoul)tedly the direct result of the fostering care and 

 activity of the State Board of Horticulture. 



Permit me to quote in part from the opening address of Honorable G. H. 

 Hecke, Director of the Department of Agriculture of California and chairman of 

 the Western Plant Quarantine Board, delivered at the meeting at Salt Lake City, 

 Utah, May 11, 1920. 



"To those in our Western states who would question the necessity and ulti- 

 mate value of our plant quarantine work, I say, 'Lift your mental vision over the 

 Rocky Mountains and consider the calamity that has overtaken the forests, 

 farms and fields of the great territory that reaches to the Gulf of Mexico and to 

 the broad Alantic, a part of our country that until very recently did not attempt 

 to Protect its crop producers by the exeix-ise of proper inspection upon arrival 

 and which now finds itself in the grip of several drastic federal quarantine 

 regulations. There is the blister rust in the pine woods, gipsy moth, brown-tail 

 moth and chestnutbark disease creating havoc in the hardwood forests, potato 

 ward in Pennsylvania, cotton boll weevil busily at work in practically all the 

 cotton fields, pink boll worm in Texas and Louisiana, European corn borer in 

 Massachusetts, New Hampshire. New York and Pennsylvania, Japanese beetle 

 in New Jersey and the Oriental peach moth well established in Massachusetts, 

 New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia 

 and the District of Columbia. All these are introduced crop pests, all constantly 

 spreading causing onerous quarantine restrictions, necessitating enormous an- 

 nual appropriations, and each season, every seasou, taking an increasing percent- 

 age of the growing crop and of the crop-producer's anticipated profits. No one 

 of these dangerous crop destroyers is yet established west of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains ; no one can reach here through its own powers of locomotion ; and it should 

 be the fixed purpose of all plant producers, equally with all quarantine officers, 

 to circumvent any attempt to assist in their migration. 



