November 7, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



441 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article :— Quarantine against Plant Pests 441 



California Experiment Centres. — I . • ■ ■ Charles Howard Shinn. 442 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 443 



Plant N t otes :— /Esculus parviflora. (With figure.) J. G. Jack. 444 



Cultural Department :— Carnations, New and Old T. D. Hatfield. 445 



Carnation Notes W N. Craig-. 446 



The Flower-garden in Late Autumn J. N. Gerard. 447 



Chrysanthemums in the Open Air G. 447 



The'Pocklington Grape, Ripening Pears E. P. P. 447 



Correspondence: — How to Move Large Maples C. 448 



Insects Injurious to Plants S. C 448 



The Pear. borer Again Professor John B. Smith. 448 



Salt-water as a Preventive of the Yellows M. H. Beck-.uith. 44S 



The Pernicious Scale on Long Island F. A. Sirrine 440 



Exhibitions:— Chrysanthemums at Short Hills, New Jersey 449 



Recent Publications 449 



Notes 450 



Illustration :— A Dwarf Horse-chestnut, /Esculus parviflora, in a Massachu- 

 setts garden, Fig. 70 445 



Quarantine against Plant Pests. 



SOME time ago we published a cut illustrating the 

 damage which was being inflicted on Pear-trees in 

 a portion of New Jersey by a borer which had been 

 detected for the first time in that state by Professor Smith. 

 Individuals of one sex had only been obtained, and there 

 was, therefore, some doubt as to what particular species 

 was preying upon the trees, but an interesting letter from 

 Professor Smith in the present issue identifies it as another 

 European insect which has probably been introduced in 

 Pear-stocks imported from Germany, and which, as we 

 now learn, is already established over a considerable area. 

 This is only one of many instances where our orchards 

 and vineyards and farms and gardens have been subjected 

 to serious loss by the introduction of foreign insects. Of 

 course, these enemies do not move across the ocean in one 

 direction only. The Phylloxera, for example, which has 

 ravaged the vineyards of Europe, and is now probably 

 found all over the globe wherever the Vine is cultivated, 

 had its original home in America. It is well known that 

 for several reasons insects which emigrate to different 

 parts of the world may find such favoring conditions for 

 their development in their new homes that they will multi- 

 ply more rapidly and become much more dangerous than 

 they ever were in the place of their origin, and there is, 

 therefore, a special cause for caution in admitting these 

 strangers. For these reasons laws were passed in Cali- 

 fornia several years ago imposing a quarantine upon all 

 plants likely to harbor any insects which may become 

 dangerous to the fruit interests of that state, and it is said 

 that Oregon, Washington and British Columbia are pro- 

 posing to enact laws of the same character. 



The report of Mr. Craw, the California State Quarantine 

 Officer, we have not seen, but, to judge from an article in 

 The Independent, his work has been of genuine value 

 to the state. Of the four hundred vessels which he 

 inspected last year he found plants and trees on one hun- 

 dred and fifty-six. The greater portion of these came from 

 Japan, but vessels came also from Honolulu, China, New 

 Zealand, Australia and Mexico. Cinnamon-trees from 

 Singapore were found infested with a dark gray wax scale 

 insect unknown on our coasts. The young wood of some 



pot-grown Cherry-trees from Japan was found entirely 

 covered with a new aphis which might have proved a 

 serious injury to the Cherry-groves in California, and 

 therefore they were dropped overboard. Different scale 

 insects were found on Magnolias, Oleanders and Camel- 

 lias. Oranges from Mexico were infested with the deadly 

 "long scale," and guavas from Central America with 

 other insects which might soon make themselves at home 

 in southern California, where this fruit is now extensively 

 cultivated. Perhaps in some cases the danger was imagi- 

 nary, since the insects were bred in such warm latitudes that 

 they could hardly survive the climate of California. Nev- 

 ertheless, it is undoubtedly the duty of the officer under the 

 law to destroy the infested fruit and plants. Two or three 

 months ago a regulation was passed by the State Board of 

 Horticulture in California prohibiting the importation 

 of rabbits or other animals or birds which are known to be 

 detrimental to fruit or fruit-trees, and ordering the destruc- 

 tion of such animals if they had been landed. This ordi- 

 nance was probably inspired by the fact that a passenger 

 on a steamship from Australia had brought with him one 

 of the "flying foxes," or fruit-eating bats, which are so 

 destructive in many tropical or subtropical countries, 

 where, under cover of the night and in countless numbers, 

 they invade and lay waste orchards and gardens in spite of 

 every effort to repel them. 



Of course, there are many difficulties in the way of 

 framing satisfactory quarantine laws, and still more diffi- 

 culty in enforcing them. The courts of California have 

 been appealed to in several cases, and the work has been 

 obstructed in other ways, but it is stated that only one new 

 pegt has been introduced into California since any attempt 

 was made to enforce the laws. Some of the California 

 papers are criticising eastern nurserymen who complain 

 against these restrictions upon trade, and some eastern 

 nurserymen, on the other hand, hold that the laws operate 

 not so much to exclude the enemies of plants as to give a 

 monopoly of business to local nurserymen. It is well for the 

 fruit-growers to be vigilant if by this they can keep away 

 from their state the Peach-yellows and the Plum-curculio, 

 but when they criticise eastern nurserymen as unscrupulous 

 and selfish they ought to remember that the pernicious or 

 San Jose scale has been sent from California into the orchards 

 of the eastern United States. Our issue for the 29th of 

 August contains the picture of a pear infested with these 

 insects, and at the meeting of the Association of Economic 

 Entomologists in Brooklyn last August, Professor Smith 

 bought half a dozen California pears at random from the 

 nearest fruit-stand, and every one of them was infested. 

 On some of them both male and female scales occurred, 

 and they were in exactly the condition to favor the intro- 

 duction of this much-dreaded pest. The skin of one of 

 these pears dropped near a fruit-tree would furnish a perfect 

 condition for the establishment of a colony. The protec- 

 tion of the fruit interests of the whole country may, there- 

 fore, demand an inspection of the thousands of car-loads 

 of fruit going out of California, as well as of the few plants 

 and fruits carried into that state. 



The fact is that the establishment of an efficient quaran- 

 tine on the borders of every state in the L T nion would be a 

 task beset with endless embarrassment. A year ago (see 

 vol. vi., page 401) we explained some of the difficulties 

 which the Federal Government would encounter if, under 

 its authority to regulate commerce among the several 

 states, any attempt should be made to prevent the trans- 

 portation of pestiferous insects and contagious plant dis- 

 eases from one part of the country to another. We pointed 

 out, too, some of the difficulties which a state government 

 must face in its efforts to suppress destructive insects, 

 plant diseases and noxious weeds within its borders. It 

 would not be an easy matter to exclude these prsts from 

 foreign countries since tin 1 germs of disease, the seeds of 

 evil weeds, the eggs of insects and insects themselves can 

 be imported in a hundred ways, even if all the fruit and 

 seeds and bulbs and living plants brought into the country 



