February,. ’20] 
MARLATT: EUROPEAN CORN BORER 
83 
tion Mr. Worthley advised me that there are 20,000 miles of roadway 
in the old 400 square miles of area in Massachusetts. To go over 
those roads is equivalent to a trip seven times the distance from Boston 
to San Francisco! Those roadways are more or less lined with weeds 
and are bordered with private estates. There are over 300,000 of such 
estates in the old limited area in Massachusetts and the added area 
now increases these many times. The insect breeds in 100 different 
plants. If we cannot determine distribution except by the employ¬ 
ment of 2,000,000 men examining every weed, we have no right to 
spend millions of dollars in efforts at extermination here and there, 
only to find that the insect occurs all around us. We should have 
wasted that money. I do not think anything more needs to be said 
on the subject of extermination. 
Practical control work is, however, another matter. The discussion 
of legitimate control work with respect to the corn borer brings us to 
the subject of state and federal quarantines. The Federal Horticul¬ 
tural Board was early requested to quarantine the invaded territory 
in Massachusetts. Such quarantine was established covering the 
then known infested district with respect to corn. Following the 
determination of the wider spread of the insect and its discovery in 
New York, additional hearings were called for the purpose of extend¬ 
ing this quarantine both as to district and subject. At these later 
hearings the officials of Massachusetts and New York were less anxious 
to have federal quarantines and requested that the matter be left in 
their own hands. Various reasons for this were urged. A federal 
quarantine being limited to interstate control would, in a sense, 
cover the whole state and would put a sort of blight on the state. 
I cannot go into the full argument. At any rate we yielded to it but 
only upon the agreement on the part of the representatives of the 
states of Massachusetts and New York that quarantines would be 
promulgated by these states that would prevent movement out of the 
infested territory of any products likely to carry the insect. Such 
quarantine orders were shortly thereafter issued by the Commissioners 
of Agriculture of Massachusetts and New York. The quarantine in 
Massachusetts has been extended five or six times, but has remained 
as applying to corn only. The New York quarantine has not been 
extended to cover the new areas of infestation. There was perhaps 
excuse for not promptly extending these quarantines. New territory 
and new food plants were being determined so rapidly that quarantine 
action could not well keep up with this increased information. Every 
day added a new township or a new county. The knowledge that the 
broom corn, that had probably brought the insect to Massachusetts 
and New York, had been widely distributed throughout the middle 
