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 1889 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 
