206 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 5 



suppressed — whether the necessary spraying has been done, and 

 done effectively. And this second inspection must be completed in 

 time to allow me to follow it up with an effective general spraying 

 operation, wherever the dangerous conditions have not been wholly 

 removed. But the first inspection being made during the early part 

 of the winter, and active spraying being impracticable or useless with 

 us in the midwinter months, orchard treatment must go over in the 

 main until towards spring, and the season during which effective 

 treatment is possible will be gone before all these various steps can 

 be taken in succession. We have of late, consequently, been obliged 

 to limit our operations to a part of the territory to be covered, in 

 order that we might get over it all in time; and elsewhere we have had 

 to trust to the owners of dangerous properties for such spraying as we 

 could induce them to do. Enough orchards have thus been left un- 

 treated at the end of the season to cause vigorous complaint both on 

 the part of those who have felt themselves compelled to spray and on 

 the part of the commercial orchardists who take the best care they 

 can of their property but who find their carefully treated trees still 

 endangered by the neglect of their neighbors. 



I have been asked this fall, in fact, by our State Horticultural Soci- 

 ety, to prepare a description of the legislation necessary to compel the 

 destruction of dangerous orchards and other such property which 

 the owner is persistently neglecting to the disadvantage and loss of 

 his neighbor. I thought it well, however, to learn first just what 

 powers I had under our present law, and consequently put the ques- 

 tion to the Attorney-General of the state, who replied to the effect 

 that our Illinois law already clearly contemplates the enforced destruc- 

 tion of dangerous property where I deem this necessary to the safety 

 of other property adjacent, and that I am warranted in proceeding 

 upon that interpretation provided that I am careful to keep strictly 

 within the letter of the law. I have consequently changed this fall 

 the form of notice given to owners of dangerously infested properties 

 in a manner to advise them that their infested trees and shrubs must 

 be either effectively sprayed or dug up and destroyed by the first of 

 April, and that, if found at that time to be still dangerously infested, 

 they must be destroyed by the first of the following June. In other 

 words, I have put myself in position to enforce effective treatment of 

 infested property under a penalty of a destruction of the infested 

 stock, provided this treatment is not administered in due time. 



The attitude of our leading horticulturists upon that subject is 

 shown by a resolution presented at the last meeting of the State Society 

 by a special committee on this subject, and unanimously adopted by 

 the Society in the following terms: "Resolved, that the welfare 



