April, '21 SANDERS: horticultural inspection 165 



to Washington for examination, and possible fumigation, is best ac- 

 counted for by the poverty of the Board, which is financially unable to 

 extablish adequate port of entry inspection, which they have been 

 willing to carry out, and will carry out, if sufficient funds are granted for 

 it. 



The committee report seems to promote the argument that Quarantine 

 37 "will create in America a horticultural and flori cultural desert," and 

 will prevent America from securing any of the new creations of plants 

 from foreign countries. The wording found in the committee report 

 leaves the above impression with the reader. There is no "Chinese wall 

 plant policy for America" under the present system of quarantine and 

 regulations, and any statements to this effect are unsupported by facts. 

 The committee also reports that the work of botanical gardens has been 

 either stopped, or disastrously checked, in so far as their research 

 operations are dependent on plants obtained from foreign countries. 

 When it is known that the liberal use of permits totaled more than five 

 hundred to date, covering a period of about eighteen months, and that 

 these permits included permission to import bulbs, ornamentals, orchids, 

 roses, and other herbaceous plants totaling nearly eleven million plants, 

 the fallacy of these statements can be realized. The policy of the Federal 

 Board, on the whole, has been decidedly liberal in the interpretation 

 of the quarantine and the regulations promulgated under it, so that 

 although certain limitations and handicaps are placed on miscellaneous 

 plant importations, there is little doubt in the mind of trained entomolo- 

 gists and plant pathologists that many potential pests will be barred 

 entry into this countr\'. 



The application and enforcement of these quarantine measures will in 

 the end have a beneficial effect on the great horticultural interests of 

 America by encouraging them to produce or grow their own material, 

 create and control to a large degree their own market and prices, and ulti- 

 mately there will come a period when our horticulturists will endeavor 

 to produce by their own efforts many of those finer creations which are 

 so easily obtained from Europe by the exchange of American gold for 

 European horticultural effort. A field will be opened up which will 

 encourage young well-trained plant propagators to exert their effort, 

 unhandicapped by the sudden importation of large quantities of new 

 creations from abroad. 



Every conscientious effort of the Federal Board to restrict the entry 

 and establishment in this country of foreign plant enemies, and every 

 effort made by them to restrict the spread of plant enemies already 

 established in America, should receive the heartiest support and coopera- 

 tion of the state horticultural inspection officials. It behooves the latter 



