70 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



MEETING FOR DISCUSSION. 



The subject assigned for discussion was " Legislative enactments 

 to prevent the multiplication of injurious insects in neglected or- 

 chards." It was commenced by E. S. Rand, Jr., who said that he 

 investigated the subject several years ago when it was under dis- 

 cussion in the Dedham Fruit Growers' Protective Association. Mr. 

 Rand said that all had experienced the ill results of the neglect of 

 others, and mentioned an orchard in AVest Roxbury which he saw 

 last spring as he was driving by. He had the curiosity to go into 

 the orchard, which contained perhaps two hundred trees, and found 

 that every leaf had been eaten by the tent caterpillars, and they 

 had then begun on the young shoots. There were, on an average, 

 ten or twelve nests on every tree, some of them as large as a peck 

 measure. The neighbors had offered to destroy these caterpillars 

 without cost to the owner, but he refused to permit them, alleging 

 his right to raise as many caterpillars as he pleased, and conse- 

 quently they were obliged, year after year, to fight the caterpillars 

 propagated in this orchard. Mr. Rand thought that it was a proper 

 time to take measures to urge the subject on the legislature. Six 

 years ago a petition from the Dedham Association, for a law to meet 

 such cases as had been described, with one from this society in aid, 

 was presented by the legislature. A draft of a bill was also pre- 

 sented and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, of which 

 George B. Loring was chairman on the part of the Senate, and 

 Daniel Needham on the part of the House. Both these gentlemen 

 expressed their approval of the measure, but the bill was never 

 reported. 



Mr. Rand said that legislation for the protection of the careful 

 against the careless was not a new thing. In the Western States 

 and Canada, land owners were required bj'^ law to exterminate 

 noxious weeds not only from their grounds, but from the roadsides 

 adjoining ; and, if not done by the owners, it might be done, by 

 officers appointed for the purpose, at the expense of the owners. 

 This legislation was especially directed against the Canada thistle. 

 Mr. Rand closed by reading the petition and bill, remarking, how- 

 ever, that the originators of the movement did not put them forth 

 as the best that could be devised, but only as indicating their 



