337 
western coast is reasonably well protected; the eastern coast lias only 
the protection afforded by the employment in almost every State of a 
trained entomologist. From our Canadian border there is no great 
danger, and the States of the northern tier almost without exception 
employ State entomologists. The Mexican border is unprotected, and 
legislation on the part of Texas is most desirable. Pending such legis- 
lation, the Department of Agriculture has temporarily employed an 
agent upon the Mexican border, whose prime business is to study the 
cotton-boll weevil recently introduced, but also to watch after other 
possibilites in the way of imported pests. This same agent, during the 
fall of 1894, traveled extensively through northern Mexico, and sent in 
an account of all the injurious insects prevalent in the cultivated regions 
which came under his observation, and from this account it appears 
that there are a number of species which should be rigidly guarded 
against. 
The matter of interstate protection is a more difficult one. The 
objections which have been urged by the editor of Garden and Forest 
are very sound. Such a thing as interstate quarantine seems to the 
writer, after careful consideration of the subject, to be impracticable. 
Where, however, such State regulations as we have just outlined are 
in force, where intelligent and efficient county commissioners have 
been appointed in each county, and where the law has been properly 
worded as to the details of the authority of these county commission- 
ers, there is no reason why the practical effect of a quarantine without 
its serious objections may not be attained. 
Given present conditions, therefore, does it not become the plain and 
immediate duty of influential agricultural and horticultural organiza- 
tions to agitate the subject of legislative protection ? Should they not 
at once and in all of our Eastern States establish committees to at 
least give the question careful consideration and, if thought advisable, 
to draft bills for presentation before their legislatures .' Reviewing the 
field I am convinced that immediate action is desirable, and that the 
sooner any given State passes a law enabling its State board of agri- 
culture to handle emergencies, at least, by county commissioners, the 
sooner will that State be in a position to protect efficiently and intelli- 
gently her agricultural and horticultural interests. 
With one word more to the individual horticulturist, let me close. 
There is no doubt that the prime agent in the distribution of injurious 
insects, particularly scale insects, is the nurseryman. Too frequently 
an orchard is handicapped from the start by the negligent planting of 
stock wl ich bears some destructive scale insect, or contains some inju- 
rious borer, or bears the eggs of leaf-feeders or other enemies. Sot a 
single tree should be set out without the most careful examination, and 
in fact we may almost go so far as to say that no stock should be 
planted without having been thoroughly washed with some strong 
insecticide, or, better, fumigated with hydrocyanic acid gas. At the 
