Vol. XXII, No. 4 WASHINGTON 



April, 1911 



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MATIONAL 

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PESTS AND PARASITES 



Why We Need a National Law to Prevent the Impor- 

 tation of Insect-Infested and Diseased Plants 



By Charles Lester Marlatt 

 Of the Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture 



With Photographs from the U. S. Department of Agriculture 



THE United States is the only great 

 power without protection from 

 the importation of insect-infested 

 or diseased plant stock. Referring to 

 European powers only, Austria-Hungary, 

 France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, 

 and Turkey prohibit absolutely the entry 

 from the United States of all nursery 

 stock. Our apples and other fruits are 

 admitted only when a most rigid exami- 

 nation shows them to be free from infes- 

 tation. Most of the other European 

 countries have very strict quarantine and 

 inspection laws, and the same is true of 

 the important English and other colonial 

 possessions. 



The United States thus becomes a sort 

 of dumping ground for refuse stock. 

 Diseased live-stock may be, and are, ex- 

 cluded by law, but diseased or insect- 

 infested plants have no bar against their 

 introduction. 



A properly enforced quarantine inspec- 

 tion law in the past would have excluded 

 many, if not most, of the foreign insect 

 enemies which are now levying an enor- 

 mous annual tax on the products of the 



farms and orchards and forests of this 

 country. 



FOREIGN ORIGIN OF MANY OF OUR INSECT 



PESTS 



Fully 50 per cent of the important in- 

 jurious insect pests in this country are 

 of foreign origin. Among these are the 

 codling moth, the Hessian fly, the as- 

 paragus beetles, the hop-plant louse, the 

 cabbage worm, the wheat-plant louse, 

 oyster-shell bark louse, pea weevil, the 

 Croton bug, the Angoumois grain moth, 

 the horn fly of cattle, and in compara- 

 tively recent years have been introduced 

 such important pests as the cotton-boll 

 weevil, the San Jose scale, the gypsy and 

 brown-tail moths into New England, the 

 Argentine ant into New Orleans, and the 

 alfalfa-leaf weevil into Utah. 



While it is true that certain classes of 

 injurious insect pests, such as the house 

 fly and other household insects which 

 may be similarly carried in ships' cargo 

 or in the packing of merchandise, have 

 been imported, and still will be, in spite 

 of any quarantine law, however rigid, it 



