February, '09J JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 33 



my request, provides that the appropriations of the office shall be ex- 

 pended on lines approved by this committee. 



I have thus in frequent consultation with me a group of thoroughly 

 representative, public-spirited men, personally or professionally inter- 

 ested in the various lines of our horticultural and agricultural work, 

 w^ho know of and believe in our undertakings and are in a position to 

 test our results themselves in a practical way, and to influence others 

 to test them. They stand also as advocates of the work with the 

 general public, whose confidence in it is naturally increased by the fact 

 that it has in advance the approval of their representatives. I am 

 often indebted to this advisory committee for valuable suggestions, as 

 well as for hearty support. 



I am also about to propose to the State Farmers' Institute — a 

 very active and influential body with us — a plan for individual co- 

 operation with the office, not in the making of experiments, but in 

 the practical use of such methods of economic operation as I have 

 worked out to the limit of my opportunity. I hope in this way 

 to establish volunteer demonstration stations in different parts of 

 of the state, from which, as centers, an improved practice may spread 

 to the surrounding communities. 



Another subject which has become very practical with us in recent 

 years is that of the legal prevention of the introduction and spread 

 of injurious insects in our territory. "We are, I suppose, practi- 

 cally unanimous with respect to the utility, if not the necessity, 

 of the supervision and inspection of nurseries, so conducted as to 

 minimize the danger of dissemination of insect and fungous pests 

 by way of the trade in nursery stock;- but we seem not to be equally 

 unanimous with respect to the supervision, under legal authority, 

 of the private property of the fruit grower and the farmer, with a 

 view to the early detection and prompt removal of conditions threat- 

 ening injury to the property of others. The principle involved 

 seems to me, however, to be virtually the same in the two cases, 

 what difference there is being in favor of the nurseryman. "Let 

 the buyer beware," is a maxim of the common law, and under this 

 one might reasonably expect the purchaser of nursery stock to 

 stand the consequences of his own ignorance and inattention. He 

 does not need to buy a particular lot of stock unless he chooses, and 

 having chosen, it is his to do -with as he likes. He may fumigate 

 or spray or destroy it if he finds that he has unwittingly bought an 

 insect infestation with his trees ; but the owner of a valuable and 

 well cared for orchard, free from infestation of any kind but lying 

 beside another so infested and neglected as to make it sure that his 



