WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD I23 



While the United States has thus perhaps ultimately profited by 

 the whole experience, there is one lesson which she might have gained 

 but which she does not seem to have learned. Germany at that time 

 had an agricultural expert attached to her embassy at Washington. I 

 think that it was Count Beno von Hermann. He was a charming 

 young man, well posted, and a ready talker. I myself handed him in 

 my office one day when he called a copy of the bulletin that brought 

 about all the trouble for the United States and which was afterwards 

 shown to Ambassador White by Foreign Minister Von Biilow. The 

 United States should have had, and should have, men of similar ability 

 in agricultural lines attached definitely as " agricultural attaches " to 

 its principal foreign offices. This was done once, in the case of C. W. 

 Stiles, who was stationed in Berlin for a time when the subject of 

 trichinosis in German meats was under dispute, but it has never 

 become a practice. 



At the present time (1927) the San Jose scale is not the terrible 

 orchard pest that in 1898 we feared it would become. This does not 

 mean that the alarm excited among the fruit-growers by the entomolo- 

 gists was in the least unjustified. It does not mean that the scale is 

 controlled by parasites that have become habituated to it. Appar- 

 ently it does not mean that our fruit-trees have developed qualities 

 resistant to scale damage, although this has been suspected in regions 

 which have harbored the scale for the greatest length of time. It does 

 mean, however, that the entomologists and the orchardists have devel- 

 oped remedial treatment, applied especially during the dormant sea- 

 son, in the way of lime-sulphur and mineral oils, which destroys the 

 overwintering scales and thus prevents serious damage during the fol- 

 lowing summer. The scale still exists in nearly all orchards, and 

 there is always a reservoir of living material on untreated garden 

 fruit-trees growing along the roadsides or on waste lands. For some 

 unknown reason, such trees, although stunted in their growth and pro- 

 ducing very inferior and spotted fruit, continue to live for many 

 years. Possibly, to a slight extent, they have developed resistant 

 qualities. 



But the United States grows as much and even more good fruit 

 than it did 30 years ago, although at the cost of greater expenditure 

 (Quaintance has estimated it at 20 millions of dollars each year). 

 Winter washes have become an annual charge against the fruit- 

 growers, and the control of the San Jose scale is simply another 

 instance in which we are still obliged to spend great sums of money 

 in fighting an injurious species while we are still trying to find some 

 easier, cheaper, and more natural means. 



