PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 63 



extensive experiment. His office, according to my notion, should be a 

 source of information, and if he does not have it he should get it from 

 some other source and that our experiment station should do most of 

 the experiments. The board of supervisors, if they see fit, can allow 

 the commissioner money from the general fund, if he can demonstrate 

 to the supervisors that he can by experimenting find something that 

 will be beneficial to the agricultural interests, and if the agricultural 

 people back him up the supervisors can not object. I don't view the 

 office of horticultural commissioner as an inspector of insects or fungus 

 diseasas altogether, because they have asked us about soil culture, and 

 I have spent as much time in studying soil and soil chemistry — twice 

 as much time as I did studying insects, and I think the beet grower 

 or the wheat grower has as much claim on us as the man who raises 

 oranges or apples, and if he wants information and we can find it, it 

 is our duty to write to some one and find out the information that he 

 desires. 



PRESIDENT JEFFREY. A great deal of the objection Mr. 

 Rodgers has made to-night seems reasonable and it would be held as a 

 vital defect only for this fact, that the law requiring the appointment 

 of horticultural guardians throughout the State has been nullified by 

 the horticultural law of 1903, under which I am acting. This particular 

 part of the law was left in by accident, but it is not a defect if you 

 read it in connection with the State law. Because now no quarantine 

 is possible in the State without an order from my office, countersigned 

 by the Governor. If you had quarantine officers like we formerly had, 

 they would have to get an order from me, countersigned by the Gov- 

 ernor, consequently the law requiring the appointment of quarantine 

 guardians has been nullified by the enactment of the law of 1903, which 

 provides another way of quarantining. 



MR. COSTELLO. In explaining one portion of the gentleman's 

 argument in regard to the law, why the supervisors want a written 

 statement is that in case the grand jury of each county wants a state- 

 ment it finds from that statement what the commissioner or the 

 inspectors are doing. Sometimes a complaint may be made that the 

 inspectors or commissioners are not doing their dut}^, and the grand 

 jury gets to work and digs up those documents and they find out that 

 the inspectors and commissioners are doing their duty and they have 

 been paid according to law. If there were no bills to present the 

 people would go after the grand jury and call them grafters. 



The convention here took an adjournment until to-morrow at 9.30 

 o'clock A. M. 



