122 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 84 



there was no ground for it, since the danger to Germany from Ameri- 

 can insect pests was purely imaginary. 



Calif ornians were particularly indignant, since it was a shipment 

 of California pears that had been refused. Interviews with Congres- 

 sional representatives of that State, published in Washington, stated 

 that California especially prided herself on the cleanness of her fruit 

 and upon the vigorous measures which for years she had taken to 

 ])rcvent the introduction of injurious insects within her boundaries. 

 It was reported in the newspapers that vigorous diplomatic corre- 

 spondence between the two governments ensued and that Ambassa- 

 flor Andrew D. White had been instructed to protest energetically 

 against the edict and to endeavor to secure a modification of its terms. 



It was not long, however, before the text of the imperial decree 

 became known, and it was then found that the particular insect 

 aimed at was the San Jose scale. When Ambassador White, at the 

 instruction of Secretary of State Judge Wm. R. Day, called on the 

 Foreign Minister, Von Billow, in Berlin, the latter sent a clerk for 

 certain documents and handed the American Ambassador a bulletin 

 on the San Jose scale that had been published in 1896 by the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture at Washington and which contained all the facts 

 concerning the destructiveness of the insect and its menace to eastern 

 orchards. (Possibly the fact that Doctor White, who had been Presi- 

 dent of Cornell University, discovered that the bulletin had been 

 written by one of his own former students may have given an added 

 assurance of its soundness.) 



The action of Germany immediately called the attention of other 

 nations to the danger which similarly threatened them. On March 18, 

 1898, Canada passed a prohibitory law known as the " San Jose 

 Scale Act." A month later the Government of Austria-Hungary 

 issued a decree simultaneously at Vienna and Budapest prohibiting 

 the importation into that country from America of all living plants. 

 Holland and Sweden sent experts to the United States to make a study 

 of the situation. 



Thus the San Jose scale was the cause, not only of a very great 

 arousing of interest in entomological matters in the United States, 

 but it promoted international quarantines on a very large scale. 



From the action that foreign governments took at this time we may 

 date the beginning of the agitation in this country to provide for 

 our own protection against foreign importations, which, delayed for 

 years largely by the lobbying of the very interests which ought to have 

 been most friendly to its passage, was finally enacted into the Fed- 

 eral horticultural law of 1912. 



