Assembly Bill 172, "An Act protecting the plantation of the cocoanut tree," prohibited the damaging, destroying, uprooting or killing of any cocoanut plant or plants without the owner's consent. There was then going on a large amount of highway construction and widening. This bill would have strengthened the position of certain persons disposed to ask exorbitant prices for land needed for rights of way. At about this time the Manila Railroad Company was compelled to pay a large sum for orange trees on a piece of land through which its road was to pass. On investigation the orange trees proved to be cuttings from branches, or young seedlings, recently stuck into the ground, many of them being already dead. Assembly Bill 250 would if passed have had the effect of depriving agents of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of the power to make arrests, and of compelling the payment of all fines imposed and collected through the efforts of the society into the insular treasury, so that the society would have been dependent upon direct appropriations for funds with which to prosecute its work. For three successive years there had been no appropriation bill. The Filipinos have little sympathy with the work of this society, and this was a scheme to kill it. Under the existing law one-half of the fines in question go to it for use in promoting its objects. Assembly Bill 251, "An Act to create rural guards in all the municipalities organized under Act No. 82, and for other purposes," would seriously have interfered with the maintenance of a proper state of public order. The duties which it proposed to vest in rural guards are now performed most satisfactorily by the Philippine Constabulary. The effect of the bill would have been to restrict the administrative authority of the director of constabulary over the movements of his force, and to interfere with the administrative authority of municipal presidents to utilize their police as in their judgment the public interests require. Assembly Bill 262 contained the following:-- "Provided: That the Director of Agriculture or his agents shall not adopt quarantine measures in provinces organized under Act No. 83 without previous agreement with the Provincial Boards concerned." For many years no more serious problem has faced the insular government than that of stamping out the contagious diseases which were decimating the horses and cattle of the islands and threatening to render agriculture almost impossible. The director of agriculture was necessarily given wide authority in the matter of establishing proper quarantines. This act would have taken necessary powers from him and vested them in provincial boards. Quarantining was very unpopular with the very people who were benefited most by it, hence the passage of this act.