33^ 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
that it is sought to kill, and, therefore, one school out of the 
same college contradicts the other. 
A person suffering from what is called heart disease is 
given digitalis, which in time ruins his stomach so that he 
can eat nothing and dies as the result of one medicine given 
to cure something else. 
In the habits of insects, in the various treatments for 
their control, are there any two experts who agree? With 
Omar Khayam, one may well say 
“Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument 
About it and about, but evermore 
Came out by the same door wherein I went.” 
Quarantine cannot be effective, except on the Statute 
Books. The law says that no package containing cuttings, 
plants, seeds, etc., shall be received by a postmaster until it 
has been inspected by a duly qualified official. To carry this 
out is an impossibility, so all mail order business must end. 
Laws of this kind are “too numerous to mention,” but the 
wherewithal to enforce them is not forthcoming. 
An evil effect of quarantine is to invite retaliation. Re¬ 
cently the State of Nevada issued a quarantine against cattle 
from California. The California State Veterinarian declared 
it the most unjust quarantine one state ever had placed 
against the other. Did Nevada remember our quarantine 
against her ? 
My friends, these inter-state, inter-county quarantine 
laws are productive of infinite harm which reacts and will 
continue to react with ever increasing volume against the 
originators, instigators, and participators. Quarantine to 
be effectual must be absolute, which is absolutely impossible. 
To prevent distribution of insects is as impossible as to 
prevent distribution of seeds. 
This does not refer to the introduction of foreign or alien 
pests. As with the introduction of coccinelids into Imperial 
Valley, nature may well be assisted. If we will persist in 
getting fruit and trees from abroad, they may well be in¬ 
spected under the most rigid laws. Their very introduction 
is a blundering mistake, really. We do not need oranges 
from Mexico any more than does the millionaire need to 
send to South America for plants for his conservatory, or 
the hotel management to import bay trees from Belgium 
to adorn their corridors, when we have such unlimited 
arboreal, floral and pomological wealth of our own. 
The only real quarantine barrier is a natural or physical 
one. Climatic conditions are imperative, but none other. 
Black scale has been shipped for half a century on various 
trees to the neighborhood of Oroville, but none can be found 
there living, I believe, while hardly an olive, an orange, or 
an oleander near the coast can be found without this insect, 
although the trees are sprayed annually with the most up-to- 
date insecticide. Instances of the kind may be multiplied 
almost indefinitely. 
So with the peach-borer. It inhabits the native tree 
growth of the Coast counties, and statistics certainly show, 
by crop rettirns, that it never has been a serious pest where 
most known. A careless, slovenly fruit grower will, of course, 
have sickly trees; but if trees are annually hoed, as they 
should be in any case, the presence of the borer is apparent. 
and his discomfiture readily at hand. This grub has been 
distributed over a great part of the State for at least half a 
century and never has gained a foothold excejjt in its native 
habitat. 
I know some enthusiasts may cite cases where certain 
arbitrary measures may seem to have worked favorably, 
but I insist that we are dealing with a principle, something 
of much wider scope, because we are or should be, endeavor¬ 
ing to understand and work with the general law, which 
harmonizes all these apparently discordant conditions. 
Again, no doubt, I am accused of indulging in platitudes, 
or soaring into* unknown realms of transeendentalism, but 
the history of the past cannot be pointed at with any pride 
or satisfaction. Why is it, may I ask, with all the supposedly 
expert knowledge of insects and plant disease, that both 
increase so rapidly ? 
Many years ago whole orchards were being killed by the 
application of strong caustic or alkaline solutions while 
trying to kill “San Jose scale” which “ruined the fruit 
industry” in California a quarter of a century ago. Since 
then mineral oils have wrought havoc and still more recently 
arsenic has burned the foliage from apple trees by the 
thousand. If the trees are not killed, certainly their constitu¬ 
tion is weakened, and they become an easy prey to the next 
disease,—insect, bacterial, or fungoid. Of course, the 
operation is often pronounced “successful,” although the 
patient lies dead. 
About forty years ago France imported grape vines from 
the Mississippi Valley, and with them the phylloxera. 
When this was discovered some years later, the European or 
vinifera grapes were dying by the hundred thousand. The 
French Government took it up, as a most important industry 
seemed doomed to destruction. Experts, encouraged by the 
offer of shekels and fame, worked for years at the problem, 
but all to no avail, when the idea occurred to use these 
American grapes as a stock on which to graft the vinifera 
This was found successful, and now certain well tested wild 
species, or their crosses, are used everywhere as stocks on 
which to graft the more tender or vinifera varieties. The 
phylloxera naturally lives upon the roots of the native 
American grapes, but does not kill them. 
Protect the Birds 
I have alluded before to birds in their relation to agri¬ 
culture. Comparatively little attention is given to the 
pamphlets issued by the U. S. Department of Agriculture 
proving incontestibly the usefulness—nay, the necessity for 
birds in order that plant life be protected. The argument 
is unanswerable. Human life depends upon bird life. 
Birds, Trees, and Man are an inter-dependent trinity, 
look at it any way you will. Destroy the forest, birds 
perish, floods succeed drouth; man starves. Why are the 
warnings unheeded? The agricultural press gives promi¬ 
nence to the silly utterances of the farmer who bewails the 
loss of some cherries, or grapes, or corn, or other fruit or 
seed. Is not the laborer worthy of his hire? But the wail¬ 
ings are heard and the still sillier legislatures enact laws 
that permit the destruction of birds. Why is the warning 
not heeded? Because in the same volume that gives figures 
