274 



JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 



[Vol. 8 



inspection, because it usually does not give the inspector proper basis 

 for judging the importance of th^ shipment. 



The attempt to prevent the importation of seriously injurious 

 insects by examining all incoming stock is theoretically the best method 

 possible. By it the chance of an injurious specie's obtaining foothold 

 would seem to be reduced to its lowest terms. As a matter of fact, it 

 is a question in the writer's mind whether the difficulty in choosing 

 and managing the large group of inspectors necessary does not counter- 

 balance the advantage gained by complete inspection: whether there- 

 fore the partial inspection carried out by a small number of capable 

 men, who, because of their small number can be more carefully chosen 

 and better paid, does not afford as great a degree of protection as that 

 given by the complete inspection. 



The work of preventing insect pests of foreign countries from enter- 

 ing protected territory has onh^ been recently undertaken. The 

 discovery of brown-tail moth nests on pear stock from France appar- 

 ently first roused the control officials of this country to the necessitj^ 

 of examining foreign stock. The fear of the introduction of the brown- 

 tail and gipsy moths in this manner was so great and the volume of 

 foreign stock likely to bring these pests so small that a large pro- 

 portion of the shipments was examined. The creation of the Federal 

 Horticultural Board, which followed the realization of this danger, 

 brought into existence a much-needed agency for the control of the 

 interstate and foreign shipments. This body has served the cause of 

 insect control well by closing the mails to unexamined plants, by so 

 organizing the importations that practically all shipments are exam- 

 ined, and by quarantining areas of infestation from which exceedingly 

 dangerous insects are likely to come. 



It is well to observe, however, in spite of all of these agencies for 

 preventing insect spread that little by little many injurious species 

 are widening their distribution, and that, as the writer stated in a 

 former paper^ it is probably only a matter of time until their range 

 throughout the world will include all regions where food conditions 

 are favorable and climate bearable. The delay in their distribution 

 which it seems practicable to effect through control measures seems 

 likely to prove sufficient for their new environment to become adapted 

 to them, and for the natural enemies, which attack them in their old 

 homes, to become distributed in their new ones, thereby reducing them 

 to the position of the pests native to the country into which they have 

 migrated before they have had a chance to do great damage. 



In New Jersey the control officials do not desire a change in the word- 

 ing of the nursery certificate or to have the consignor commit himself 



^ Journal of Economic Entomology, Vol. VI, pp. 130-133. 



