The Cabbage Root Maggot. 549 



the soot gave the plant a bitterness which warded off the maggots. • Gardeners 

 could easily try it on a few plants, but we doubt its having any preventive 

 value. 



Lime and Soot. — We find a puddle of lime and soot advised in Miss Orme- 

 rod's " Manual of Injurious Insects," and by "Horticola" in the "Rural 

 New Yorker " for 1881. There are no definite records of its value. The lime 

 would have little or no preventive effect, and there is but little evidence in 

 favor of the soot as shown above. 



{b) Insecticides. 



Oil or Lye. 



Several American writers, including Lintner, Riley, Saunders, and Fyles, 

 have included in their remedies for this pest the recommendation to dip the 

 roots in either oil or lye before setting. This seemed to us a very harsh 

 treatment for the tender rootlets of seedlings, and we were thus led to wonder 

 how the recommendation crept into the literature to be handed down to the 

 present time. The two first named authors attributed it to Bouche. Turning 

 to Bouche's earlier accounts in 1833, we find, following Loudon's literal trans- 

 lation of Kollar in 1840 : " Dipping the plants to be transplanted in oil or lye 

 of ashes, or soaking the holes that are to receive them with these liquids, 

 will often destroy the plants, and cannot therefore be recommended." How 

 could a positive recommendation be evolved from that ? A search through 

 the literature soon revealed who evolved it. Turning to Curtis' account of 

 the insect in 1843, we find this : ♦' It often happens that very good specifics 

 which may be successfully employed in the garden cannot conveniently be 

 extended to the field ; such, I fear, is the following remedy proposed by 

 Bouche. He says that where whole fields of cabbages have fallen a sacrifice 

 to the destructive maggots, that the crops are now completely preserved by 

 dipping the roots, as they are transplanted, into oil or lye of ashes. " It is un- 

 fortunate that our American writers have depended so much on Curtis' ac- 

 count of this pest, both from a systematic and economic standpoint. 



Pyrethrum. 



In this report for 1885, Mr. Fletcher says: "In my own experience the 

 most satisfactory preventive treatment has been to dip each plant bodily in- 

 to a pail of pyrethrum wash (containing a little soap) at the time of planting 

 out." In addition to this he uses fresh gas lime around each plant to pre- 

 vent eggs from being laid. It is doubtful if the pyrethrum has any prevent- 

 ive effect used in this manner; whatever protection is offered, is doubtless 

 due more to the gas lime. 



Paris Green and Insect Powder. 



In 1886, a Massachusetts correspondent ("Rural New Yorker," p. 840) 

 tried to save his cabbage and cauliflower plants by dipping them before set- 

 ting in a puddle of dirt and water to which a quantity of insect powder 



