In your remarks on this subject in the November Monthly you seem to deprecate the idea of retaliation. That seems to me to be the only way to bring the idiots who swayed the Berne Convention of July 4th, 1883, to their senses. Let us make use of the same weapons, suicidal though they be, and we may rest assured that less than twelve months will suffice to bring these wiseacres to their sober second thoughts. About the only horticultural commodities that America exports to Europe in quantity are tuberoses and potatoes, probably not exceeding in amount $100,000 per year, while the United States undoubtedly imports fifty times, and perhaps one hundred times, that amount in bulbs and plants. True, it would be a deprivation and loss to resort to such an expedient as to have our government retaliate, but Europe has everything to lose in such a fight. We are every year becoming better able to grow the bulbs and plants that we are importing, and were we forced upon our own resources it might be the best thing that could happen to us, as in our great variety of soil and climate we would probably find that even Holland bulbs and other similar roots could be as well grown here as there.

It is not more than twenty years ago that we thought it necessary to import all our gladiolus, and some of our tuberose bulbs. Now we can give them odds on both. Twelve months loss to Europe of America as a customer for her bulbs and plants would cause her to run up the white flag and ask for a cessation of hostilities, but that she will meanly keep up this one-sided fight unless we strike back, and strike back promptly, I can see no reason to doubt. Had there been a shadow of reason for the sweeping restriction against American plants and bulbs being landed in Europe it would have been easier to bear, but to give the trivial pretext that it is to prevent the introduction of phylloxera into lands already swarming with it shows that the members of the Berne Convention were either a lot of senseless old grannies, or else they were influenced by parties whose interest it was to prevent the few American exports of bulbs, etc., reaching Europe, and made use of this absurd and miserable excuse for that purpose. It is unpleasant to think that human nature is so depraved that men will stoop to such means for the attainment of ends.

But who can tell? Even Bismarck was disturbed by the ghost of trichina in American pork, although he could swallow the infinitely more numerous worms in his own native article without seeing them.