314 



THE MONTHLY BULLETIN, 



conditions, and repeatedly called the attention of the horticultural 

 authorities of California to the fact that the Chinese wild pear might 



prove to be a very desirable blight- 

 resistant stock. On November 27, 1908, 

 I sent by the steamship "Nippon Maru" 

 consigned to the State Commissioner of 

 Horticulture, a large number of the seeds 

 of the wild Chinese pear. The seeds ar- 

 rived in good condition at Sacramento 

 l)ut I was unable to learn that any use 

 was made of them further than to place 

 the same Oin exhibition. Fortunately a 

 few of these seeds were taken by Mr. 

 B. B. Whitney (then connected with 

 the State Insectary) and planted in his 

 house yard at Oroville, adjacent to other 

 growing pear trees. Figure 67 shows a 

 tree that has grown from one of these 

 seeds — a fine specimen in full bearing 

 and one that has shown no signs of the 

 pear blight, while the surrounding pear 

 trees on common stock have been badly 

 attacked by the ])]ight each year. An- 

 other feature to which Mr. Whitney calls 

 attention is that while the woolly aphis 

 has seriously damaged the pear trees nn- 

 mediately contiguous to this tree, none 

 of these insects have been found attack- 

 ing the wild Chinese seedling. 



Figure 68 taken from the same tree 



shows the fruit bearing habit of this wild 



seedling, and is evidence of the apparent 



Fig. 68.— Showing the fruit possibility of obtaining seeds in large 



ami bearing habit of the quantities for propagation. 



Chinese wild poar. (Photo by ^ i i f^ 



L. A. \Vhitn('y.) 



ANOTHER FORTUNATE FIND. 



I'.y H. V. M. Ham., Quarantine Inspector, San Diego, Cal. 



Tlie reason that the parcel post has been a nightmare to the Quar- 

 antine Division was vividly shown by the following incident which 

 occurred at San Diego: On the 13th of May, 1915, the writer found, 

 among other parcel post matter laid aside for his inspection, a package 

 from Mexico. This proved to be a typical Mexican "gift package," 

 and contained among other things a large lot of guavas — one of the 

 favorite host fruits of the Mexican orange maggot. On lifting the 

 cover of the box two small, dark-colored capsules immediately caught 

 the eye of the writer, and caused him to close and wrap the box and 

 adjourn with it to a closed room for further investigation; there 

 thirty-two of these capsules found to be living pupas of the Mexican 



