PROTECTING THE UNITED STATES FROM PLANT PESTS 



211 



popular demand for this beautiful flower- 

 ing tree developed, promises to be one of 

 the most serious checks that has ever 

 threatened our common deciduous fruits — 

 peach, plum, prune, apple, pear, etc. 



It is now firmly established in some half 

 a dozen eastern States and probably has 

 been even much more widely distributed 

 through the agency of miscellaneous im- 

 portations of flowering cherries, so that 

 its ultimate spread throughout the United 

 States cannot now be prevented. This 

 insect is another serious pest introduced 

 with ornamentals that will in a few years 

 cause a continual annual charge to fruit 

 production of millions of dollars. 



The Japanese beetle is another new 

 pest of wide range of food habit and 

 likely to cause in the near future tre- 

 mendous annual losses to all kinds of 

 fruits, including not only apple, pear, and 

 plum, etc., but also grape and small fruits. 

 It not only destroys the foliage, but eats 

 into the ripening fruit and renders it 

 unsalable. It breeds in garden, lawn, and 

 pasture lands as a soil-inhabiting white 

 grub. 



The evidence indicates conclusively that 

 it was introduced about a decade ago in 

 soil with an importation of Japanese Iris 

 roots, and has now spread over a fairly 

 large section of New Jersey and into 

 contiguous portions of Pennsylvania. 

 There is now no possibility of extermi- 

 nating it, and its board bill will be a 

 continuing charge, perhaps ranking ulti- 

 mately with that of the San Jose scale. 



The introduced diseases of forest trees, 

 such as the pine blister rust, the chestnut 

 blight, and the insect and disease enemies 

 of the cereal and forage plants, are vastly 

 more expensive lodgers than those just 

 mentioned and, as already indicated, fur- 

 nish the larger items making up the half 

 billion to a billion dollar annual cost due 

 to imported plant pests. 



These undesirable immigrants we must 

 lodge and board forever, but we want to 

 shut the doors if we can to their brothers 

 and sisters and cousins and aunts ! 



MANY OTHER PLANT ENEMIES TO BE 

 EXCLUDED 



These hundreds of foreign pests have 

 become permanent factors in American 

 agriculture and horticulture. They ought 

 to have been kept out, and America 



SMUGGLING CONTRABAND FRUIT 



A customs inspectress at Laredo, Texas, has 

 taken a bag- of alligator pears hidden in a 

 woman's skirts. The smaller bag contained 

 evidence of violation of the A^olstead Act. 



would then have enjoyed a tremendous 

 advantage over the old world ; but late 

 as the action was taken, it was still op- 

 portune. 



The Department of Agriculture re- 

 cently compiled and published a cata- 

 logue of the more dangerous insect ene- 

 mies of plants in foreign countries which 

 for the most part have not yet gained 

 entry into the United States. This cata- 

 logue was issued as a hand-book for the 

 information of the plant quarantine in- 

 spectors, Federal and State. 



In it are listed some 3,000 different 

 foreign insect pests ! These include in- 

 sects injurious to forest and shade trees, 

 to fruit and ornamental trees, and to the 

 various farm and garden crops. 



A similar manual, which is in course 

 of preparation, lists the known foreign 

 fungous diseases of plants, and will de- 

 scribe and catalogue, when completed, 



