86 
APPLICATION OF THE AGRICULTURAL PESTS 
ENACTMENT. 
By F. W. South, b.a. 
( Chief Agricultural Inspector, F.M.S.) 
Introduction. 
I CULTIVATED crops in any country are liable to two classes of 
V " / ' diseases, those occurring in the country, and those introduced 
from outside. In order to provide means of controlling these two 
classes of disease in the Federated Malay States, the Agricultural 
Pests Enactment was passed in 1913 and became law upon its 
publication in the Gazette on 1st August of that year. 
The Enactment. 
The main provisions of the Enactment provide for the control 
of diseases occurring in the country while powers under a certain 
section enable the Chief Secretary to make rules for preventing the 
introduction of pests into the Federated Malay States, by 
prohibiting the landing from places outside the States of any plant 
or animal likely to introduce a pest and by providing for the 
treatment or destruction of any plant or animal which has been 
landed and of the packages, cases, pots or covering in which the 
same may be contained. 
As the known diseases of rubber are common to practically all 
rubber producing countries in the East, it has not been considered 
necessary to ask the Chief Secretary to provide any rules in 
connection with the importation of plants, especially as such 
importations are not at present extensive in the Federated Malay 
States. 
The measures for the control of such diseases as already occur 
or may arise in the future may be divided into two classes. 
(a) Those requiring the treatment of specifically diseased 
cultivated plants and 
(&) Those requiring the removal of conditions suitable to the 
introduction or spread of any pest. 
The details of these measures are now well known and it is not 
necessary here to enumerate them, suffice it to say that they involve 
the employment of a special staff of European officers and Malay 
subordinates who are invested with the necessary powers, including 
powers of entry on cultivated land, of removing portions of infected 
plants for examination and of serving legal notices requiring the 
carrying out of definite instructions for the treatment or control 
