624 ANNUAL EEPOETS OF DEPARTIVIENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



pest is now more or less established for the purpose of aiding these 

 States in the local control to prevent spread, particularly with re- 

 spect to the inspection and disinfection of commercial or other ship- 

 ments of fruit or nursery stock originating in the invaded areas. 



The present status in Mississippi, as brought out at the hearing 

 on November 20, would seem to indicate that the few points of in- 

 vasion have been completely cleaned up and that this scale is prob- 

 ably not now present in that State. A State quarantine is being en- 

 forced to prevent further entry of the scale. 



In Louisiana control work has been largely limited to the city and 

 immediate vicinity of New Orleans, which is the district known to 

 be principally invaded. Control of shipments out of this district 

 is being enforced under State authority and the State and city are 

 spending a good deal of money, in cooperation with the Bureau of 

 Entomolog}', in local clean-up and repression. The State promises to 

 extend control to all jDoints known to be invaded outside of the New 

 Orleans district. 



The Alabama authorities report that steps have already been taken 

 to provide for control measures and have given assurances that such 

 control will be promptly instituted. The invaded district is a very 

 small one in that State, limited so far as now known to the citrus 

 development (Satsuma oranges) in the Grand Bay district near 

 Mobile. The control of this pest, therefore, as to that district is of 

 vital importance to other portions of Alabama as well as in relation 

 to interstate shipments of fruit or plants originating in the invaded 

 district. 



Reference has already been made to the existence for a consider- 

 able period of the camphor scale in Texas. In May, 1923, an in- 

 spector of the Bureau of Entomology traced an infestation in the 

 Grand Baj^ district, Alabama, to Satsuma orange and fig trees ob- 

 tained some 12 years before from a Japanese nursery at Alvin, Tex. 

 An inspection of this nursery made shortly afterwards showed that 

 the property — some 300 acres — now abandoned as a nursery but still 

 containing some 10,000 camphor trees, was scatteringly infested 

 throughout with the camphor scale. This nursery was started in 

 1907, importing its citrus stock directly from Japan, indicating 

 clearly the source of origin of the scale. In fact, the importations 

 for this nursery may have been the original and chief means of 

 introducing this scale pest into the United States. A good deal of 

 the stock of this nursery, on or prior to its abandonment in 1919, 

 was removed to another Japanese nursery at Genoa, Tex., and other 

 material went to a nursery at Beaumont, and still other material 

 was variously distributed to Houston and elsewhere and to States 

 as remote from the center as Colorado and Massachusetts. During 

 the 12-year period of the operation of the nursery at Alvin, it was 

 the source of distribution of orange, fig, camphor, and other trees 

 not only widely in Texas, but in other States. The State of Texas 

 has taken no steps to clean this property, now used as a stock ranch, 

 nor to make any inspections to determine the possible establishment 

 of this pest elsewhere in the State — representing that it has no 

 available men or funds for such work, A survey is now being 

 conducted by the Bureau of Entomolog}^ of this department 

 under the camphor scale appropriation to determine in a general 



