FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
25 
to come true, the westward passage to 
China. The Hamburg American line is 
preparing for ten steamers per month 
through “Panama to the Orient,” The 
Italian Government has heavily subsi¬ 
dized steamship lines for South American 
trade via Panama. Great Britain with 
her ships like unto the stars of Heaven 
is always ready. Japan, already almost 
in control of the Pacific Ocean commerce, 
will have three steamer lines from Japan 
through Panama direct to New York. 
All these and many more are preparing 
to take the utmost advantage of the new 
water way. The warfare of today, all 
about us, is the warfare of commerce. 
Let us look up all these places in our 
old school atlas and also note besides the 
location of Australia and Hawaii, and 
North Africa and Spain, France and It¬ 
aly, Bermuda and Mexico. Now take 
one general memory-fixing glance of the 
world today and the routes of trade and 
close the book. 
This old world is much as it was when 
we studied it years ago, much as it was 
when it came into being as the result of 
gigantic forces under the guidance of a 
Master Mind. It has been modified, it 
is true, by the never resting forces of 
nature, though these modifications are 
small as applied to the earth as a whole. 
But in another way it is not the same 
world, for man has stepped in, the Amer¬ 
ican people, and with the digging of a 
huge ditch, the course of the sea trade 
of the whole world will be in a large 
measure altered, and for Florida, what? 
We shall see in our harbors more strange 
flags, at our docks more strange ships, 
and in our streets strange faces and 
strange tongues. Commerce will flow 
into and through this State as never be¬ 
fore. In this commerce in greater or 
less quantities there will be new fruits 
from new sources and old ones from old 
sources, all delivered on new ocean high¬ 
ways direct at our doors. New seeds, 
new plants, new shrubs and new trees 
will come. Besides and in addition to 
this, the reduction in tariff will bring in 
more fruits and more plants than ever 
before. If it does not, the bill will fail 
in its purpose. 
The time is here when the fruit and 
vegetable growers and every individual 
who is interested directly or indirectly in 
the agricultural wealth of this State 
should wake up to the conditions by 
which we are confronted. 
With the fruits and plants that come, 
new insects will come for fruits and plants 
and insect pests travel together. It is a 
broad statement, but do you know that 
every serious insect that attacks our or¬ 
ange and grapefruit trees is a foreign in¬ 
sect, and a very large proportion of our 
most serious pests of vegetable and farm 
crops are also foreign insects. Do you 
consider the whitefly to be a serious 
pest? Or the purple scale, or the long- 
scale, or the chaff scale, or the mealy 
bug? Or does the cotton farmer look 
upon the cotton stainer or the boll wee¬ 
vil as his friends? And do you think it 
an exaggeration that insect pests and 
plant diseases in this State levy annual 
toll on our crops in excess of one-third of 
their value? Or would it be nearer right 
to say in excess of forty per cent., or 
even fifty per cent. Whatever the amount 
it is enormous, it is a tax of millions of 
