164 



THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 



CERTIFIED— SIGNED— SEALED. 



By Frederick Maskew. 



As a result of their direful, almost calamitous, experience in attempt- 

 ing to control the cottony-cushion and San Jose scales, the crop pro- 

 ducers of California became convinced that protection from further 

 invasions of a similar nature depended solely on the control and careful 

 inspection of all importations of plants and plant products at the point 

 of delivery. Fortunately, they also became wide-awake in time to the 

 important fact that personal attempts to introduce an occasional so- 

 called acquisition to our flora 

 constituted as great, if not a 

 greater, danger of introduc- 

 ing new and dangerous in- 

 sects — as proven by the two 

 cases cited above — than did 

 the commercial shipments of 

 standard nursery stock; that 

 exceptions to the rule would 

 ultimately bring their best 

 efforts to naught and that all 

 imports of plants should be 

 subject to the same super- 

 vision, if complete control is 

 to be maintained. So firmly 

 fixed in this State is the com- 

 mon belief in this policy that 

 from its inception, stead- 

 fastly, consistently, at all 

 times, against all objections 

 and at great expense the sys- 

 tem has been adhered to, de- 

 veloped and extended until 

 the mail, the last open avenue 

 of unrestricted entrance for 

 plants and pests — the former 

 hcte noire of the diligent 

 quarantine officer — has been 

 subjected to control and the 

 circuit of protection com- 

 pleted. 



The above illustration cor- 

 roborates our long contention 

 that the mail furnished a 

 facile entrance into California for insect pests of our orchard trees. 

 The cut portrays a gardenia plant shipped by Wachendorff Bros., 

 florists, Atlanta, Georgia, to Mrs. J. L. Hunter, Orange, California, 

 through the medium of the parcel post. Under the new post office 

 regulations this plant was delivered to the horticultural quarantine 

 inspectors for examination, declared infested beyond treatment and 

 eventually sent to the Central Quarantine Station by Mr. Roy K. 



Fig. 57. — A gardenia plant infested with live 

 Dialeurodes citri, the citrus white fly. (Photo 

 by L. A. 'WTiitney.) 



