8 SECOND ANNUAL CONVENTION 



plant stock that France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Austria-Hungary, 

 and Turkey absolutely prohibit the entry into their borders of American 

 nursery stock. If we may believe the United States Bureau of Entomology, 

 "A properly enforced quarantine inspection law in the past would have ex- 

 cluded manj% if not most, of the foreign insect enemies which are now levy- 

 ing an enormous annual tax on the products of the farms and orchards and 

 forests of our country." According to Marlatt fully fifty per cent of the 

 important injurious pests in this country are of foreign origin and have been 

 imported into the United States through what it would be hardly too strong 

 to condemn as indifferent stupidity. Among these pests are the codling moth, 

 so destructive to our apple trees, the Hessian fly, the asparagus beetle, the 

 hop plant louse, the cabbage worm, the wheat plant louse, the croton bug, 

 the Angoumois grain moth, the horn fly of cattle, the boll weevil, the San Jose 

 scale, the gypsy and brown tail moths that are destroying New England's 

 forests, the Argentine ant in New Orleans, and the alfalfa leaf weevil in Utah. 



Failure to prevent the importation of these pests costs almost untold sums 

 in trying to control the diseases occasioned by them. It is estimated, again 

 using the reports of the Bureau of Entomology, that the cost of spraying 

 apple trees to prevent the codling moth is sixteen million dollars a year; 

 the San Jose scale costs about ten millions a year in prevention alone. The 

 New England States are now appropriating upwards of a million dollars a 

 year to save their trees from the gypsy and brown tail moths. 



In the third place, we can help by urging a State law to prevent the 

 wasting of our forests by fire. It is certainly time that fire ceased to be the 

 lazy man's lawn mower, the 'possum hunter's plaything, and the rabbit 

 chaser's method of driving his game. We punish a man who destroys by 

 fire our wealth in houses, barns, hay ricks or cattle, but we deem it a venial 

 matter for a man to destroy our wealth in trees and plants. With absolute 

 impunity a man may carelessly start and leave a fire that will rage for days 

 and do damage almost beyond belief. If our Association could do no other 

 thing than secure an acceptable law to prevent this destruction, it would 

 certainly have justified its existence. 



In the fourth place, let us remember that as a people, the newspaper is 

 largely educating us; let us go to the papers. We can start a forest preserva- 

 tion publicity campaign by writing short articles for our local papers or by 

 getting these papers to copy valuable articles from technical journals or 

 bulletins. We must do this persistently and systematically. As soon as 

 people thoroughly understand the waste now going on, understand how easily 

 this could be remedied, understand how easily a forest can be reset to trees, 

 understand what an increment in wealth such resetting would be, these 

 things will all be done. The thing needed now is to get these facts into the 

 minds of tenants, landowners, lumbermen, sawmill men, and all others who 

 deal directly or indirectly with trees. Whenever a forest fire occurs in the 

 neighborhood of one of our members, let that member get an accurate esti- 

 mate of the loss caused by the fire and publish it in every paper in the 

 county.. If the figures are accurate, comment will be unnecessary. 



These, then, are some of the things that our infant organization can at- 

 tempt. If we give time and thought to these ends, we shall accomplish much. 



