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JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 13 
former years. While it is true that many of these interceptions were 
made on plants from countries without inspection facilities, a large per¬ 
centage of the interceptions were made on stock from countries which 
possess a recognized inspection service. As the result of some ten or 
more years of experience in inspection work, the writer is convinced 
that it is impossible for any man, or group of men, to examine a large 
shipment of plants and locate every insect which may be present. 
We have been repeatedly advised that the stock exported by the five 
principal countries to the United States was carefully examined by 
recognized experts, and yet there was seldom, if ever, a shipment of 
any size which did not show insects of some description when examined 
in this country by State or Federal Inspectors. Morever, a reinspec¬ 
tion of these same shipments would undoubtedly reveal insects which 
escaped attention at the time the two previous examinations were 
made. It is absolutely impossible to detect insects in soil around balled 
plants, without removing, and, in many instances, sifting the soil, which 
treatment to some plants would be fatal. Fortunately, this difficulty 
has been eliminated by the exclusion of soil around plants. Scale 
insects and Aleurodids are difficult to locate even by experts on- these 
families of insects. On a number of occasions in recent years, we have 
reinspected, in Washington, three or four times a half dozen of small 
plants infested with the mining scale (Howardia biclavis Comst.), 
and each reexamination invariably revealed scales which were under 
buds or in some secluded spot, and had escaped the eyes of the 
inspectors on previous inspections. It is true that this scale is a diffi¬ 
cult one to detect, but the examinations were made under favorable 
conditions in a well-lighted room. 
Unfamiliarity with the work and injury occasioned by the oriental 
fruit moth (Laspeyresia molesta Busck) undoubtedly caused inspectors 
of this country to pass supposedly free but infested stock which bore a 
foreign certificate of inspection. 
These facts are not given to minimize the work of foreign inspectors, 
but to emphasize that where the human element enters it is impossible 
to say definitely that a nursery or given shipment is free from injurious 
insects. Someone may say that it is possible to definitely assume that 
a nursery or a case of plants is free from injurious insects, but how are 
we to determine whether or not an insect of no economic importance in 
Holland will not in this country become injurious and indeed change its 
habits and preferred hosts. 
A number of the insects referred to below, have been intercepted in 
former years, and if the wholesale exportation of miscellaneous plants 
had not been stopped these insects and many others would, no doubt, 
have continued to enter with foreign plants and plant products. 
