PROTECTING THE UNITED STATES FROM PLANT PESTS 



213 



the European alfalfa weevil, which is 

 now largely reducing the output of al- 

 falfa in half a dozen States in the middle 

 West, was undoubtedly introduced with 

 soil about imported plants. This weevil 

 hibernates in the soil, and the only known 

 means by which it could have reached the 

 State of Utah, where it got its first foot- 

 hold, is in soil with imported plants. 

 Other weevils of foreign origin, affecting 

 clover and other plants, have undoubt- 

 edly been similarly introduced. The 

 Japanese beetle is a recent instance of 

 such introductions. 



The European earwig was also intro- 

 duced in soil with imported plants and is 

 perhaps an exception to the rule, in that 

 it has been very troublesome to orna- 

 mentals in the highly developed estates 

 of Newport, where it got its first foot- 

 hold. It is notably a pest of garden and 

 ornamental plants as well as a very ob- 

 noxious house pest and promises a very 

 unsavory future record. 



These instances are, perhaps, sufficient 

 to illustrate the danger of bringing in 

 pests with wide possibilities of damage 

 more or less accidentally with ornamen- 

 tals or other living plants. 



Some of these foreign plant enemies 

 have come in in other ways : The Hes- 

 sian fly with straw ; the Argentine ant 

 possibly merely as a stowaway in the 

 cargo of some ship coming to New Or- 

 leans ; and the corn-borer with imported 

 broom-corn. It is entirely possible, how- 

 ever, for both of the latter pests to be 

 carried by living plants — the Argentine 

 ant in soil and the corn-borer in any of 

 the many ornamental plants which it is 

 known freely to infest. 



But looking over the record of these 

 introductions, from early colonial times 

 to the present, it is apparent that 90 per 

 cent of these foreign pests have come in 

 with living plant material of one sort or 

 another. 



FOREIGN COUNTRIES LONG PROTECTED 



For some 30 or 40 years prior to 1912, 

 when there was no authority in law to 

 control plant importations into the United 

 States, the more important exporting 

 European nations which were finding 

 free markets in this country for their 

 plant products — wiser than we — to pro- 

 tect their own cultures, were prohibiting 



THE WORK OF THE EUROPEAN CORN- 

 BORER IN AN EAR OP ELI NT CORN 



This European pest was brought to the 

 United States in 1908 or 1909 with importa- 

 tions of broom-corn, and gained footholds 

 near Boston and in western New York and 

 also in southern Ontario (see preceding page). 



