April, 23] 
fracker: isle-of-wight disease 
135 
tions must cover a wider territory than the British Isles. Dr. Ellinger 
of Weimar is authority for the report that it has been discovered in 
Germany; Professors Bouvier, Leclainche, Vallee, Berland and Mamelle 
of Paris have shown its presence in different parts of France; and 
according to the Schweizerische Bienenzeitung it also occurs in Switzer¬ 
land. The exact extent of the area to which the prohibition will apply 
is to be determined by the Secretary of Agriculture, as will be seen from 
the provisions of the bill. 
In connection with the committee hearings a certain amount of oppo¬ 
sition developed by correspondence, all of it based on the assumption 
that the quarantined area would include the countries from which 
Caucasian and Carniolan bees are imported. The bee journals, how¬ 
ever, gave generous space to the proposed legislation, the American 
Honey Producers League arranged for the appointment of a committee 
to cooperate with the members of this association, and prominent bee¬ 
keepers and inspectors wrote their congressmen favoring the bill. 
The assistance of George S. Demuth and E. R. Root, was especially 
valuable as they appeared in person before the House and Senate 
committees respectively. 
The United States has suffered so extensively from European, Asiatic, 
and African pests and diseases of plants and animals that the present 
move is a most encouraging one. The Acarine disease, if introduced, 
would perhaps not wipe out honey production completely, but it would 
unquestionably add new and serious difficulties to profitable beekeeping, 
materially increase the cost of production, and make the occupation 
more hazardous than it is at present. One of the members of the House 
committee, while apparently forgetting the battle raging over horti¬ 
cultural “quarantine 37,” nevertheless expressed his approval of the 
principle involved by commending the bill and adding: “This is the 
first time in my experience that a scientific department of the govern¬ 
ment has advocated the stopping and stamping out of disease before 
we had to spend a lot of money in hunting it up in this country.” 
The act as passed, which may be obtained as document 293 of the 
67th congress, is as follows: 
A BILL to regulate foreign commerce in the importation into the United States of 
the adult honeybee (Apis mellifica). 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America 
in Congress assembled , That, in order to prevent the introduction and spread of disease 
dangerous to the adult honeybee, the importation into the United States of the 
honeybee (Apis mellifica) in its adult stage is hereby prohibited, and all adult honey¬ 
bees offered for import into the United States shall be destroyed if not immediately 
