150 
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 16 
What do you mean by interception? That they are found, or ex¬ 
cluded. 
Mr. R. Kent Beattie: If a pest is intercepted at the port of 
first arrival, then the material, unless it can be safeguarded, does not 
enter the United States. If it is on material against which there is 
a special quarantine, it cannot enter anyhow, except when the im¬ 
portation is made by the United States Department of Agriculture. 
If the material is found by the state inspector at the final destina¬ 
tion, the state inspector, we assume, safeguards the material, either 
by destruction or disinfection, as he may think desirable. If the 
pest is found by Federal inspectors at Washington, D. C., or at 
San Francisco, the material is given the very best treatment that 
we know how to give it to eliminate the pest. If, for example, there 
is found in certain special permit material an aphis that our inspectors 
know how to destroy by fumigation, the material immediately 
receives vacuum fumigation. If a fungus disease is found which we 
know how to destroy by some treatment, the treatment is given. 
If we do not know how to destroy the pest, the material is returned 
to the country of origin or destroyed. 
If one of our representatives in the summer field inspection finds 
a pest, we have the power furnished by special agreement, in every 
contract issued between the importer of special permit material and 
the Federal Horticultural Board, to go into that man’s nursery and 
either cause a treatment to be given or to cause destruction, if neces¬ 
sary, of the material concerned. This is not merely based on the 
quarantine, but on an agreement which the importer has signed and 
has given us a bond to enforce. 
The point to the whole thing is this: the pest must be kept out. 
At the same time, if it is safe to bring the material in, we wish to 
help the nurserymen to bring it in, but never at the expense of in¬ 
festing the country. We have had to destroy very few shipments 
at the inspection house. For example: One shipment of bulbs which 
came from Mexico for propagation purposes in this country was so 
badly infested with an insect that the material was ordered destroyed. 
We have, of course, a large force of men in the Bureau of Ento¬ 
mology and the Bureau of Plant Industry, who are experts in insect 
pests or fungus diseases. Whenever a pest is collected that we do 
not recognize, it is sent to the experts of these Bureaus for deter¬ 
mination. We get all the facts we can. We get immediate determi¬ 
nations because plant material cannot be delayed. It must move. 
