96 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
suit, the moth “came back” stronger than 
before, and when the public was aroused 
to the real seriousness of the situation, 
eradication was impossible, and control 
was the only hope. Consider this item of 
three hundred thousand dollars for arsen¬ 
ate of lead to be used for spraying for one 
year, and then consider the appropriation 
of three hundred thousand dollars, which 
was granted to the Plant Board by the 
1921 Legislature, only after one of the 
hardest fights in the memory of its mem¬ 
bers. This money was to carry on the en¬ 
tire work of the different branches of the 
State Plant Board for two years; forty 
thousand per year for the Quarantine De¬ 
partment, whose duty it is to keep out the 
very pests that are costing other states and 
countries millions of dollars a year. 
To return to the gipsy moth: Many 
people wonder why the Plant Board will 
not allow blocks of granite, tombstones, 
birch hoops for orange wraps, fence posts, 
etc., to come into the State from New 
England, unless they have been inspected 
and certified by the Federal Horticultural 
Board. The reason is this: The female 
moth lays her eggs on all forest products; 
she also lays them on slabs of granite, 
stone, and other quarry products as well as 
nursery stock. There is a Federal ruling 
that such material cannot be shipped out 
of the infested areas until after it has been 
inspected and passed by an inspector of the 
Federal Horticultural Board. We have 
boats arriving daily from this section of 
the country, and hardly a boat docks with¬ 
out some such material on board. Every 
year carload after carload of birch hoops 
arrive from Maine, and as any of the 
hoops may have egg masses of the moth 
on them, it is necessary to inspect the en¬ 
tire lot. If any of you can imagine a 
more pleasant way of spending a hot aft¬ 
ernoon than inspecting a carload of birch 
hoops in a close warehouse, I would like 
to hear of it. Just such an inspection pre¬ 
vented the possible introduction of this 
pest in Manatee county. One of our in¬ 
spectors intercepted an egg mass on some 
hoops consigned to a crate mill at Braden- 
town several years ago. As this insect 
will devour every known useful plant, 
grass, flower, shrub, vine, garden or field 
crop in New England, you can imagine 
the damage resulting through its estab¬ 
lishment in this State, where there is 
bound to be a greater number of broods 
than occurs in the New England States. 
In addition to the gipsy moth, there is 
also established in the New England sec¬ 
tion the European corn borer, and the 
Japanese beetle, both pests of recent intro¬ 
duction. Since the introduction of the 
corn borer, it has spread into parts of 
Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, where 
it promises to become one of the major 
pests of corn, and will cause enormous 
losses to the farmers of those sections. 
Not only is corn attacked, but almost all 
of the vegetables are hosts of this pest. 
Many of the flowers are subject to attack. 
Right here is where we got in bad with 
many people by prohibiting the entry into 
Florida from the infested areas of asters, 
chrysanthemums, gladiolas, dahlia and 
sunflower plants in addition to corn and 
its products (except clean, dry, shelled 
corn), hay, straw, etc., and all succulent 
plants, all of which are likely to carry in- 
