TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 117 



warrant a much more genera] application than at present is secured. 

 The horticultural interests of this country are becoming of vast impor- 

 tance, too vast to be threatened without more than individual protest 

 to offer protection, and those whose interests are at stake have a right to 

 demand that their business shall receive public recognition. In some 

 states, laws are being passed by the respective legislatures, for the protec- 

 tion of horticultural interests, and county commissioners are being chosen 

 to see that such laws are duly enforced. Now, this is all well enough, 

 so far as it goes, and where fruit interests are paramount will probably 

 suflQce. But the poor fellows who go into localities where this is not the 

 condition of affairs will reap no benefit. Even if county commissioners 

 are there selected, they will more than likely not half do their duty if at 

 all. Very few of us care to acquire the ill will of our townsmen, even in 

 championing a measure that we know to be a commendable one^ and you 

 can hardly expect to make a man a commissioner and have him willingly 

 do that which you would yourself shrink from doing. It is asking too 

 much of human nature. Would it not be far better to place the whole 

 matter in the hands of the national government, and make the system 

 a part of the one designed for preventing the introduction and diffusion of 

 foreign insect pests, as indicated in my paper relating to that matter? 

 You may think me a crank on this subject, but I have been among farmers 

 and fruitgrowers all my life, and during the last fourteen years have seen 

 more or less of insect depredations in many parts of the United States 

 and Australasia, and I have not been encouraged by our attempts to com- 

 pel decisive measures to be taken by those who did not wish to do so, and 

 have seen these very measures enforced by governments less powerful 

 than a single state here in America. More than this, the people of at 

 least one of these foreign governments have shipped apples nearly or 

 quite 10,000 miles, and placed them on the market in the city of Toledo, 

 almost at your doors, and besides are keeping American apples out of the 

 English market. I have been buying fruit for the use of my family for 

 the last twenty years, and never yet saw a time when I did not have to 

 pay a good price for a first-class article. There is and always will be a 

 demand for good fruit, but you can not raise a crop of fruit and a crop of 

 insects on the same tree at the same time, and make money out of the 

 transaction. You can kill your own insects, in the majority of cases, but 

 there is nothing that you can apply to keep those your neighbor raises 

 from coming to you, unless you can prevent his raising them at all. 



In conclusion, let me say that I did not infer that you wished me to 

 come before your society and tell you when and how to spray; to tell you 

 that you must cut the borer out of your peach trees ; to tell you that you 

 could not poison the woolly aphis, and other similar things that you can 

 get out of almost any horticultural book, experiment station bulletin, 

 or even agricultural paper. I knew that you had many old veterans 

 among you that knew as much as, and possibly more than, I do about such 

 matters, and I thought I might safely take this advanced position. Be- 

 sides, I did wish to tell you some things about the introduction of foreign 

 insect pests into this country, as it is going on today, and point out to you 

 what appear to me to be the greatest obstacles to the growing of fruit 

 profitably. Obstacles that must, it seems to me, increase rather than 

 decrease in the future, unless you can compel those about you to respect 



