392 
State Board of Horticulture has established, 
under State laws, a quarantine for all in- 
coming plants and fruit. The entomolo- 
gist and quarantine officer, Mr. Alexander 
Craw, has entire jurisdiction over such 
articles consigned to points within the 
State, and examines, destroys and fumi- 
gates at his discretion. He has not, how- 
ever, in his reports, given us complete lists 
of the insects collected in this work, al- 
though I understand, from persons who have 
visited his office, that he has preserved col- 
lections of the more important species from 
an economic standpoint. The vessels ex- 
amined have, almost without exception, 
come from Pacific ports, and the difficulty 
of naming insect material thus received 
would be very great. It is this fact which 
has probably hitherto prevented the publi- 
cation of a general list. A list of the scale 
insects, however, has been published.* 
Between July 2, 1894, and August 29, 
1896, Mr. Crew inspected 232 vessels carry- 
ing plants or other articles liable to be in- 
fested with living insects, and consigned to 
California individuals or firms. 122 lots he 
found clean and passed ; 40 lots he admit- 
ted after fumigation ; 20 lots he destroyed 
and 78 lots he destroyed in part. One lot, 
consisting of 1,000 boxes of apples, he sent 
back on the refusal of the owner to allow 
them to be fumigated. 
Living plants and nursery stock afford, 
then, perhaps, the most certain means for 
the accidental transmission and subsequent 
establishment of many kinds of insects. 
Commerce in objects of this class is rapidly 
increasing and has already assumed con- 
siderable proportions, the imports into the 
United States alone in the fiscal year end- 
ing June 30, 1896, having reached a value 
of nearly $1,000,000, while the previous 
year they amounted to something over 
$600,000. 
* Bull. 4. Tech. Ser. Div. Entom. U. S. Dept. 
Agric., 1896, pp. 40-41. 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8S. Vou. VI. No. 141. 
No great elaboration will be needed con- 
cerning the importation of foreign insects 
upon fruits, fresh and dry; other dry food 
stuffs; cloths; lumber, or domestic animals. 
Fruits were imported into the United States 
in the fiscal year 1895-6 to the value of 
nearly $20,000,000, and, unquestionably, 
upon imported fruits are carried many in- 
sects. The opportunities for the establish- 
ment of species coming with fresh fruit, 
however, are obviously slight as compared 
with those which come on living plants or 
in dried food-stuffs, and, as a matter of 
fact, it appears that already nearly all of 
the dried-food insects have become cosmo- 
politan. The same may be said of the in- 
sects which affect domestic animals. The 
forms which are truly parasitic in the larval 
stage have most of them been carried every- 
where, while the other forms which attack 
domestic animals only as adults have some 
of them been carried far and wide. As an 
example, we may recall the European 
Hematobia serrata, which was brought to 
New Jersey probably in 1886, and which 
has spread over the entire country from 
Maine to California. 
The fact that insects may be, and doubt- 
less are, transmitted in the material used 
in packing heavy or delicate merchandise 
must not be overlooked. We have already 
shown that dangerous weeds: have been 
transmitted in this way, and when the ma- 
terial is hay or straw the danger of import- 
ing certain injurious insects becomes great. 
Cecidomyia destructor, the well-known Hes- 
sian fly, is supposed to have first been 
brought to the United States from Europe 
in straw bedding on troop vessels during 
the War of the Revolution, and to have re- 
cently been carried from Europe to New 
Zealand in the straw packing of merchan- 
dise. Laws recently proposed in New 
Zealand, Australia and Cape Colony pro- 
vide that such straw or hay packing shall 
be burned immediately the case is opened. 
