100 PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



scale imported from Australia to California, which became at once so 

 destructive to the fruit-growing interests. The investigation carried on 

 by the State showed that this scale in its native country is devoured 

 by a lady bug, the Vedalia, and this Vedalia, brought to California, has 

 almost exterminated the threatening pest. Similar investigations seem 

 likely to disclose the real nature and the natural enemies of the 

 so-called San Jose scale, and Government investigations of a like nature, 

 and legal protection, may be necessary to save the oranges of the State 

 from the devouring grub so common in Mexico, and to save the English 

 walnut from a similar pest in Europe. If these pests should become 

 established in the State, as seems probable, it is beyond the power 

 of an individual to fight them, and they can only be fought through 

 knowledge. 



The same rule applies to scientific investigation in many fields. 

 Aristotle once declared it a function of government to do whatever is of 

 common interest, and whatever it can perform better than individual 

 enterprise is able to do. 



Dr. Jordan referred to the process of artificial selection as used in 

 the development of varieties of fruit or of breeds of animals. He 

 detailed briefly the theory underlying hybridization and selection, as 

 practiced by Mr. Luther Burbank, the great master in that art, and 

 showed something of what can be done along the lines in which 

 individuals vary. 



He then showed charts illustrating the singing birds of the Hawaiian 

 Islands, the thirty species or more being essentially alike in bodily 

 structure, but differing in a most extraordinary degree in the form of 

 the bill. It can be shown with great probability that these birds have all 

 sprung from one stock and that that stock is some one of the numerous 

 species of honey-creeper found in Central America. The honey-creeper 

 has a slender, slightly curved bill, and birds of that type are still 

 extant on the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands, Kauai. Then it can 

 be shown, in accordance with the demands made by different sub- 

 stances on which birds feed, how this bill has become longer and longer, 

 more curved, fitted for sucking honey from flowers, and finally changed 

 into an extremely long, bow-shaped bill, suitable for probing into the 

 depths of the leaf-cup of the leie-vine, and into the thick masses of 

 lichen, in both of which places numerous insects are found. In still 

 other birds the upper mandible has become exceedingly long and flex- 

 ible, while the lower is cut off short. These birds pound on a tree, like 

 a woodpecker, with the lower half of the bill and scale off' the bark or 

 knots, while with the upper half they draw out insects. The upper bill 

 is used mainly as a probe. Still others have the bill short and thick; 

 and others, exceedingly strong like that of a grosbeak, and capable of 

 cracking nuts. Still others have the tips crossed like those of the cross- 



