Nursery Inspection From the Inspector’s Side. 
By E. W. Berger. 
Mr. President , Ladies and Gentlemen: 
The essential parts of this paper 
were written nearly a year ago, and 
were then intended to be a contribu¬ 
tion toward supplementing Nursery 
Inspection (i) and (2), published by 
Prof. H. A. Gossard as Press Bulletins 
Nos. 6 and 7 of the Florida Agricul¬ 
tural Experiment Station, and repub¬ 
lished in the Florida Agriculturist for 
June 19 and 26, 1907, pp. 5 and 7, re¬ 
spectively. The purpose of the paper 
was to set forth more fully the prac¬ 
tices of inspectors as understood by 
the writer, based upon his own experi¬ 
ence, and the experience of other in¬ 
spectors obtained verbally and from 
their writings. The writer realizes 
that, considered from the standpoint of 
the ideal, the inspection of nurseries, 
as practiced in the United States, is 
frequently open to criticism; but the 
subject has been treated here as modi¬ 
fied by the conditions which exist, 
rather than from an ideal point of 
view. In other words, we have to deal 
with a practical question and not a 
theory. 
THE RIGHTS OF THE INTERESTED PARTIES. 
These naturally come under three 
heads: those of the buyer, the nursery¬ 
man, and the inspector. 
The Buyer. —The buyer, or grower, 
is perhaps the most vitally interested 
of all, and generally has the least to 
say in regard to the inspection of the 
goods he desires to buy. That the 
buyer might have much to say will be 
brought out later. The buyer has the 
right to be protected; but at its very 
best, a certificate from an inspector 
cannot be a perfect guarantee of free¬ 
dom from insects and diseases; a fact 
noted in Nursery Inspection (2), and 
generally recognized by experienced 
inspectors. The point is, that it is 
physically impossible to examine every 
tree in a nursery, to say nothing of 
examining all parts of a tree. Never¬ 
theless, a certificate signifies much. 
After the inspector has examined, say, 
the four sides of a large block of stock 
and has passed through it in several 
directions, carefully scrutinizing ab¬ 
normal appearances as well as making 
a close inspection of an occasional tree, 
he feels reasonably certain whether 
the block is clean or not. Besides 
signifying that a diligent search has 
been made, a certificate implies that 
moral obligations have been assumed 
by the nurseryman. It thus becomes 
especially obligatory upon him to send 
out nothing but clean stock. Then 
there is a further deterring influence, 
namely the fear of exposure and for¬ 
feiture of the certificate if he sends out 
infested or diseased stock. 
In view of the fact that a certificate 
cannot be an absolute guarantee, it has 
been suggested that a written guaran- 
