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JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 16 
inspection of such Director of Agriculture or Deputy Quarantine 
Officer or Guardian. This law places squarely upon the transportation 
companies at point of destination the responsibility of holding all plant 
products arriving in California until they have been properly inspected 
and passed. Naturally, the law does not contemplate the indefinite 
holding of perishable commodities; and the law assumes that the com¬ 
modities shall and will be promptly and properly inspected and disposed 
of. It has been found that the interest of the transportation officials is 
equal only to the interest manifested by the quarantine officials. In¬ 
spections must be prompt. Calls must be frequently made to remind 
the transportation official of his duty. The same condition applies at 
post offices. Common carriers should not be subjected to restrictions 
not equally binding upon the Post Office Department. 
In this connection, probably no carrying or transporting agency has 
shown a greater desire to cooperate in plant quarantine enforcement 
than the Post Office Department. That all states of the Union do not 
take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by the Post Office De¬ 
partment for inspection of plant products in the United States mails is to 
be regretted. While a degree of quarantine enforcement is in a certain 
measure desirable and effective, full and complete enforcement is in 
every way desirable, and certainly vastly more effective than a partial 
enforcement. It is also true that if common carriers are forced to 
comply with quarantine regulations while plants move freely and with¬ 
out hindrance in the way of inspection in the mails, it not only con¬ 
stitutes discrimination against common carriers, but encourages and 
assists in the defeat of the purposes of plant quarantine, since shippers 
and receivers of plant products will most assuredly forsake the common 
carriers for the less restrictive channels of the United States mails. 
Of what real value is plant quarantine? Doctor Marlatt has re¬ 
peatedly pointed out that our most serious pests have been introduced 
into the United States by incidental shipments of plants which were of 
no real economic value, and which should have been, and would have 
been excluded, had there been legal national authority for such action 
prior to the passage of the plant quarantine act. The fact that no 
pest of major importance has become established in the United States 
since the passage of the Plant Quarantine Act demonstrates in a graphic 
manner the value of plant quarantine to the United States as a nation. 
As to the value of quarantine to a state, California has believed in the 
wisdom of quarantine action for many years, and by reason of judicious 
use of quarantine power, has succeeded in remaining free from many 
