this Convention to urge the necessity of co-operation with the De- 
partment of Agriculture in an attempt to obtain changes in its rulings 
and methods in regard to the importation of plants on which the future 
of American horticulture depends. 
Our American Chestnut has now nearly disappeared and with it Another 
many million dollars worth of timber and beautiful and useful trees. View of 
Our butternut appears to be going the way of the chestnut. The Quarantine 
chestnut disease, Endothia parasitica, and the butternut disease, 37 from Dr. 
Melanconium oblongum, would probably have been kept in the Robert T. 
native habitat abroad had proper quarantine been in order at that Morris 
time of importation of nursery stock. 
The browntail moth and the gypsy moth belong to foreign im- 
portation. A number of bacterial and fungous plant diseases now 
under way have been brought from distant shores. Greater and greater 
economic losses will ensue unless we can enforce a more and more 
rigid scrutiny of plants which are imported under the observation of 
government officials. 
Why is it that imported diseases run riot? The question relates to 
evolution and survival of the fittest. When a parasite of any sort de- 
velops in any part of the world enemies of that parasite are developed 
synchronously so that what we call the balance of nature is main- 
tained. Man is the only animal capable of seriously disturbing the 
balance of nature. In a country where host and parasite have de- 
veloped side by side, there is a weeding out of non-resistant individual 
plants and a preservation by natural selection of the ones capable of 
survival in the presence of the enemy. This process of natural selection 
is one which belongs to centuries of history of any successful plant. 
When we bring to this country a parasite of any sort it is thrown into 
the midst of the land of milk and honey and so far as that parasite is 
concerned, it finds the doors open to the widest possible development. 
Its enemies are absent, resistant forms have not as yet made their way 
to the top in the struggle and an entire species of valuable plants may 
disappear practically from the face of the earth in the course of a few 
years. 
Under the supervision of a well paid staff of experts at Washington 
we may safely import plants which are likely to bring with them their 
parasites, minus the parasites of these parasites. In the absence of i 
such quarantine and supervision more and more plant diseases I 
would be thrown among the innocents and the slaughter of the 
iimocents will eventually become so disastrous that the public in j 
general will come to know what is already known by men who are in- 
formed upon the subject. It will then be too late. 
27 
