400 REPORT OF STATE BOARD OP HORTICULTURE. 



REMEDIES AND PREVENTIVES. 



In the effort to exterminate this insect the slimy covering exuded by the 

 larvae in such copiousness was formerly taken advantage of and applications 

 of various powders and dusts were made to them, such as ashes, lime, or 

 road dust, with the object of having it adhere to their viscid surface and 

 kill them. Under this treatment, however, the larva usually merely sheds 

 the incumbered skin and starts in life afresh with a new coat. 



The best means of destroying the slug-worm is to spray the plants with an 

 arsenical wash or with a simple soap solution. The larvae are delicate and 

 easily killed, and as they eat almost exclusively on the upper surface of the 

 leaf where the jjoison can be most easily placed, they get the greatest 

 amount of it and are the easiest of all larvae to be thus exterminated. The 

 plants may be sprayed with paris green or other arsenical wash at the rate 

 of one pound of the poison, mixed with an equal amount of lime, to two hun- 

 dred and fifty gallons of water. 



The soap wash to be effective must be applied at a strength of one-half 

 pound of soap to a gallon of water, first dissolving the soap, preferably 

 whale oil, by boiling in a small quantity of water. 



Where one has but a few plants to spray and does not care to employ an 

 arsenical or the soap wash, hellebore may be used either as a dry powder or 

 as a wet spray. The powder may be applied with a bellows or dusted lightly 

 over the plants from a cloth bag, making the application preferably when 

 the plants are wet with dew. 



So sensative is the slug-worm, that very heavy i^ains will often destroy it, 

 and it is much less apt to be injurious in wet seasons. For this reason it 

 may often be possible to rid plants of it by subjecting them to a forcible 

 water spray. 



