April, '21] o'byrne: standardized nursery stock 185 



record showing how each tag was used. This record or 

 invoice should give the name and address of both the nursery- 

 man and purchaser, date of shipment, an accurate list of 

 the plants shipped and the number of the certificate tag used 

 thereon. In other words, an invoice. If, at the end of the 

 season, it is found that the nurseryman has failed to account 

 for any tags issued him, the missing records should be 

 promptly called for. 

 This requirement is one of the most important. It should have a 

 place in every state's inspection scheme. Nursery Inspection laws are 

 for the protection of farmers and horticulturists. To protect themselves 

 they secured the enactment of such laws, with the mistaken idea that a 

 highly trained inspector could look at a tree and tell whether it was free 

 from insect pests and diseases. The farmer and horticulturist want 

 protection, and under the ordinary nurser}^ inspection system they are 

 neither getting what they want nor what they are paying for. Is this 

 charge fair? Let us see. 



This nation's nursery inspection laws were passed primarily to stop 

 the spread of San Jose scale. Did they stop it? No; San Jose scale 

 has probably been shipped under the certificate of every Nursery 

 Inspector in the United States. 



Consider the host of pests that have been spread on nursery stock in 

 the last few years: fire blight, cottony cushion scale, white pine blister 

 rust, Oriental peach moth, wooly aphis, crown gall, Japanese beetle, 

 chestnut blight, citrus canker, and so the list goes. Citrus canker 

 entered Florida on certified stock from two, and perhaps three different 

 states and from Japan. It was passed, I believe, by Federal Inspectors. 

 It was shipped all over our State on certified stock : proof that inspection 

 alone, no matter how rigid, is insufficient. There are many reasons why 

 inspection alone cannot give proper protection: 



1st. A nurseryman has large simis invested in his business. If you 

 find some pest in his stock you can't condemn it all whether 

 you actually find it infested or not and require its absolute 

 destruction. He would fight such a ruling in the courts and 

 would usually win. You must compromise with him by arrang- 

 ing a fumigation, or some other such precautionary treatment — 

 and then the pest spreads. 



2d. An inspector is practically helpless when dealing with a new pest. 

 He can not put on a blanket quarantine that will damage or 

 ruin a nurseryman every time he sees a new spot; he must 

 watch developments for awhile. If eventually he finds that 

 it is a serious pest he knows, to his chagrin, that stock he has 

 been certifying as apparently clean has been carrying that pest. 



