246 JOURNAL OP ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 2 



NURSERY INSPECTION IN MINNESOTA 



By F. L. Washburx, St. An thou i/ Park, Minn. 



I am very glad to comply with a request of the editor and start the 

 ball rolling in the direction of a series of articles from different nurs- 

 ery inspectors, showing how the work is carried on in various states. 



Minnesota, of course, does not have the problems to combat present 

 in many other states, which are partly or entirely in zones more con- 

 ducive to the presence of insect pests on fruit and nursery stock. At 

 the same time it is forging ahead as a fruit-growing state, the acreage 

 is increasing yearly, and we have something like a hundred nurseries, 

 many of which are doing a good business, and some of which have a 

 very large patronage. 



The nursery inspection law of Minnesota forbids the entrance into 

 the state of any stock not properly certified. It does not oblige every 

 nurseryman within the state to have his stock inspected, although it 

 gives the entomologist of the experiment station power to inspect any 

 stock on which he has reason to suspect the presence of an injurious 

 insect or plant disease. Out of the approximately one hundred nurs- 

 eries above referred to, inspection is asked for about sixty-five. This 

 work is done either by the entomologist himself, or by his chief 

 assistant, the latter last year doing a very large portion of the work 

 in question. The law requires the nurserymen to bear the expense, 

 and also to pay a fee to the inspector at the rate of $5 a day for the 

 time occupied. This fee is turned in to the state at the end of the sea- 

 son. The work is simplified and the expense to the nurserymen les- 

 sened by grouping the nurseries, as far as possible, on circuits, each 

 nurseryman on a circuit bearing his portion of the expense of inspec- 

 tion on that circuit. 



A curious condition arises in connection with this work, no doubt 

 met with commonly by other inspectors, from the fact that the law 

 gives us no discrimination as regards what constitutes a nursery. A 

 man may have only two or three hundred trees on a small piece of 

 ground, which he simply rents, and the inspector may be reasonably sat- 

 isfied that the nurseryman is not doing business on an honorable basis, 

 and yet if he finds this man's trees free from pests, plant or animal, 

 he has to give him a certificate, which can be used, of course, on any 

 trees obtained from any source. We, however, protect ourselves in 

 this particular by stating on the certificate that the same only applies 

 to stock absolutely on the premises when examined. 



As brought out in discussions at various times among inspectors, no 



