THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
23 
onerous to tlio legitiniale nursery inl(‘rests may never 
have to be adopted in California. 
1 will now briefly toueh upon the ehanges in the stale 
and eounty hortieultural eommissioners aets, in both of 
which you are deeply interested. 
1. The State Coininissioner Aet provides for the ein- 
jdoyinent of two more held deputies whose duty it will 
be to aid the eounty hortieultural eommissioner to help 
enforce standardization, eounty inspection, state (juaran- 
tine and other laws relating to horticulture and primarily 
and principally to bring about the greatest possible uni¬ 
formity in inspection work throughout the state. 
2. The California nurserymen are now required to 
register with the state eommissioner of horticulture and 
each will be given a special license number, said number 
to be attached to every shipment of nursery stock. Nur¬ 
serymen outside of the state must also secure permits 
before they can do business in California. 
This regulation has not been adopted or suggested for 
the purpose of providing a revenue for the state commis¬ 
sioner of horticulture—as the charge for registration is 
only nominal—but the main purpose of the provision is 
to keep track of all engaged in the nursery business 
whether temporarily or permanently. As you know, in 
the large cities of California, nurseries are conducted by 
parties who are responsible to a far greater degree, for 
the spread of insect pests than are the established bus¬ 
iness interests here represented. IMr the purpose of 
following up infected shipments from irresponsible nur¬ 
serymen it is well to enforce a proper registration. By 
studying the new edition of the State Horticultural Sta¬ 
tutes we find that this amendment requiring registration 
of California nurserymen is not entirely clear in its 
meaning. I will therefore, issue a set of rules defining 
the obscure parts of the amendment, and I have not done 
this sooner because of my desire to request this conven¬ 
tion to appoint a committee of nurserymen to meet with 
me to assist in the difficult task of formulating rules and 
regulations. 
The county horticultural commissioner act has been 
strengthened. 
1. It provides that the State Board of Horticultural 
Examiners may now appoint a county horticultural 
commissioner upon the refusal of the board of super¬ 
visors in a county that is legally entitled to the services 
of such an official. 
2. This act makes a lien on property to cover the cost of 
eradication or control by the county horticultural com¬ 
missioner take precedence over and be paramount to 
all other liens except the lien of taxes. 
3. For the purpose of preventing spread of pests 
through inter-county shipments, since the county quar¬ 
antine by the board of supervisors has been abolished, 
it was necessary to adopt the principle of state quar¬ 
antine in the county horticultural commissioner’s act. 
This adoption of the state quarantine provision makes 
possible the same relation to inter-county shipments 
that the state quarantine law provides for inter-state 
shipments. This provision will stand the test of court, 
and is necessary to protect one locality of our state 
against another. Statutory provision has been made 
for holding shipments of plants, trees, etc., at the point 
of destination until they have been inspected by the 
county hoiticultnral commissioner, and uniform meth¬ 
ods of treatment and disposal of inlesti'd shipments 
have been provided. 
4. In addition to this the county horticultural commis¬ 
sioner is charged with the control of rodents and 
weeds, largely for the purpose of making his services 
to his county of the greatest economic value. 
This practically ends my remarks on horticultural leg¬ 
islation, so far as it alTects the interests of the nursery¬ 
men. Many other points of interest may be brought out 
by the discussion following. 
In conclusion 1 will say that my success as a business 
fruit grower is largely due to my training in the nursery 
business in Gennany, France, and ending with my grad¬ 
uation from the Boyal Botanic Gardens of Kew, England. 
Thus I have a natural sympathy for the profession, and 
this sympathy and my absolute conlidence in the splendid 
future of your labors gives me the assurance that the 
co-operative efforts of the State Commission of Horticul¬ 
ture will meet with your full approval and because of my 
appreciation of the greatness of your work and the im¬ 
portance of it in further developing the resources of our 
glorious state, the state commission will spare no ef¬ 
forts to make the application of the state inspection laws 
as fair and as uniform as is consistent with the preserva¬ 
tion of the safety of our horticultural interests, the great- 
ests on earth. 
i_ 
Will you please tell me what should be the advance of 
the retail selling price over that of wholesale so that I 
could make a fair profit? Berkley. 
Alls. This is a vexed question, and one which has 
many phases. 
You will have to figure out for yourself what it costs 
to do business and then be governed accordingly as it 
will depend largely on the kind of trade you are catering 
to. 
Three to three and a half times will be a very good 
basis to figure on until actual figures are on hand. This 
advance on the single rate only. You could possibly 
handle quantities profitably by doubling or selling at 100 
[ler cent advance. 
Will you kindly advise the best method of storing per¬ 
ennial plants. E. B. H. 
Alls. Many kinds of hardy herbaceous perenials can¬ 
not be stored very satisfactorily. 
As a rule those having thick fleshy roots such as 
paeonies, German iris, Platycodon hollyhocks can be car¬ 
ried all right in a storage house. 
Herbaceous jilants vary so greatly and each kind needs 
to be handled a little differently from the other that it is 
diflicult to give methods that would be successful with 
them all. 
On the whole you will find digging in the fall and 
