AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 



OF THE 



STRAITS 



AND 



FEDERATED MALA/ STATES. 



No. 1.] JANUARY, 1911. [Vol. X 



LEGISLATION AGAINST THE DISSEMINATION OF 



PESTS. 



At the first International Congress of Tropical Agriculture Mr. 

 Willis read an interesting paper on the steps taken to introduce the 

 legislation against the introduction of pests into countries in which 

 such pests did not occur. Unfortunately, his historical part of the 

 subject is wofully incomplete and inaccurate. He commences by 

 saying that " Such legislation to the best of my knowledge began in 

 the United States and it has only in recent years appeared to any 

 marked extent in the tropics." He gives no dates here and does not 

 state when or what form of, legislation was first started in the United 

 States, but how about the early regulations against Phylloxera in 

 France ? We think this was the first recorded legislation of the kind. 

 The following paragraph is even more astonishing: "Ceylon is per- 

 haps ahead of most tropical regions, though it was in actual time 

 preceded by the Federated Malay States. In the latter country the 

 beetles that attack the coconut palm had proved a most troublesome 

 pest, and one which bid fair to render coconut cultivation entirely 

 unrenumerative. Under these circumstances an ordinance was passed 

 in 1898 for proper treatment of the disease, but as it was left for the 

 owners to do so, and they were not inspected, nothing was done till 

 1902, when a white inspector with assistants was appointed." 



His audience would probably have been surprised to hear after 

 that statement, that the first steps to introduce legislation against the 

 coconut beetles were taken in Singapore in 1887, and that in 1 889 the 

 Editor of this Bulletin, after studying the damage caused by these 

 beetles, published a paper on the subject in the Journal of the Straits 



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