Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Diseases of Cultivated Plants and Trees
There are many causes which favour the spread and increase of disease at the present day, which had no existence in bygone times, perhaps the most potent is that commonly known as 'rapid transit.' Undoubtedly a change of seed is good, but, as experience has proved, you never know what disease you are intro ducing, and in many instances it is impossible to detect anything wrong until too late. The facility with which seeds, tubers, and even living plants can now be sent to the uttermost parts of the earth is a source of great danger from the point of view of introducing new diseases, and unless something in the way of a quarantine is insisted upon in every country, it appears highly probable that in course of time those diseases, which assume the proportions of an epidemic, Will be equally abundant wherever the host-plant is cultivated. Where total prohibition is not considered necessary, quarantine, which has answered so well in the case of animal diseases, might with advantage be applied in the case of fruit-trees, etc. The trees should be planted in some suitable place, and be examined from time to time by some qualified person. After a season's growth they might be allowed to pass into the country, if free from disease.
I am quite aware that some people will say this idea is not practicable, and further, such precautions are -not necessary. There is certainly nothing impracticable; it is quite as easy to plant a tree in one place as another. The cost of a tree that has been in quarantine for a season would certainly cost more than it would at the moment of landing, but on the one hand the purchaser would secure a tree free from disease, whereas on the other hand the tree might prove to be infected With some disease. The fact that the most destructive diseases attacking fruit-trees and other plants in Europe, also eventually appear in whatever part of the world such trees are cultivated, is absolute proof that the disease has been conveyed along with the plant.
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