337 



western coast is reasonably well protected; the eastern coast has only 

 the protection afforded by the employment in almost every State of a 

 trained entomologist. From our Canadian border there is no great 

 danger, and the States of the northern tier almost without exception 

 employ State entomologists. The Mexican border is unprotected, and 

 legislation on the part of Texas is most desirable. Pending such legis- 

 lation, the Department of Agriculture has temporarily employed an 

 agent upon the Mexican border, whose prime business is to study the 

 cotton-boll weevil recently introduced, but also to watch after other 

 possibilites in the way of imported pests. This same agent, during the 

 fall of 1894, traveled extensively through northern Mexico, and sent in 

 an account of all the injurious insects prevalent in the cultivated regions 

 which came under his observation, and from this account it appears 

 that there are ai number of species Avhich should be rigidly guarded 

 against. 



The matter of interstate protection is a more ditticult one. The 

 objections which have been urged by the editor of Garden and Forest 

 are very.sound. Such a thing as interstate quarantine seems to the 

 writer, after careful consideration of the subject, to be imi)racticable. 

 Where, however, such State regulations as we have just outlined are 

 in force, where intelligent and efficient county commissioners have 

 been appointed in each county, and where the law has been properly 

 worded as to the details of the authority of these county commission- 

 ers, there is no reason why the practical effect of a quarantine without 

 its serious objections may not be attained. 



Given present conditions, therefore, does it not become the plain and 

 immediate duty of influential agricultural and horticultural organiza- 

 tions to agitate the subject of legislative protection ? Should they not 

 at once and in all of our Eastern States establish committees to at 

 least give the question careful consideration and, if thought advisable, 

 to draft bills for presentation before their legislatures"? Keviewing the 

 field I am convinced that immediate action is desirable, and that the 

 sooner any given State ijasses a law enabling its State board of agri- 

 culture to handle emergencies, at least, by county commissioners, the 

 sooner will that State be in a position to protect efficiently and intelli- 

 gently her agricultural and horticultural interests. 



With one word more to the individual horticulturist, let me close. 

 There is no doubt that the prime agent in the distribution of injurious 

 insects, particularly scale insects, is the nurseryman. Too frequently 

 an orchard is handicapped from the start by the negligent planting of 

 stock wl ich bears some destructive scale insect, or contains some inju- 

 rious borer, or bears the eggs of leaf-feeders or other enemies. Kot a 

 single tree should be set out without the most careful examination, and 

 in fact we may almost go so far as to say that no stock should be 

 planted without having been thoroughly washed with some strong 

 insecticide, or, better, fumigated with hydrocyanic acid gas. At the 



