THE SECRETAKY'S PORTFOLIO. 213 



received by experienced members with many grains of allowance, yet we have 

 since learned that all orchards treated at this time with the poison were not 

 only ridded of the codling moth, but of noxious insects preying on the foliage. 

 We predict that the use of arsenic water and London purple will become more 

 general for fighting our insect foes in the very near future in agriculture and 

 all divisions of horticulture. 



CARBOLIC ACID AS AN INSECTICIDI^ 



Prof. A. J. Cook read an article before the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, from which the following extracts are taken : Bisul- 

 phide of carbon I found too expensive to use in sufficient quantity to destroy 

 the radish maggot { jinthomyia rajyhani) so I cast about for something else and 

 prepared the following : To two quarts of soft soap I added two gallons of 

 water. This was then heated to a boiling temperature, when one pint of car- 

 bolic acid (in a crude state) was added. This mixture is then set away in a 

 barrel or other vessel and is ready for use as occasion may require. I mixed 

 one part of this liquid to fifty parts of water, to be used on the radish plants. 

 It was used by three parties in three places. Mr. Lee used it in the college 

 garden ; a student — Mr. E. Hale — used it on a bed specially prepared, and I 

 used it in my own garden. Mr. Lee sprinkled it on the plants and poured it 

 into a trench made close beside the row of plants. Mr. Hale and myself 

 sprinkled it directly on the plants. Messrs. Lee and Hale made but one appli- 

 cation, and found that it kept the insects at bay for about two weeks. Even 

 this proved of no little service. I made the application once every week, and 

 the radishes were almost entirely free from the maggots. My bed was seventy 

 or eighty rods from the other beds; but I cauglit the flies about my garden, 

 and plants near by, not treated, were badly injured by the maggots. Two 

 cautions should be urged; firs", sprinkle the plants as soon as they are up, and 

 thereafter every week or ten days; secondly, the mixture, if sprinkled directly 

 upon the plants, must not be so concentrated as to injure the plants. My 

 experiments this season make me feel certain that this will prove a valuable 

 remedy, and if cheaper, it may even replace the explosive bisulphide of carbon 

 in fighting the cabbage maggot and the squash /Egerian. 



About my house at the Michigan Agricultural College I have planted a little 

 apple orchard of eight trees. The trunks and larger branches of these trees 

 have been thoroughly washed twice each spring, the last week of May and the 

 last week of June, with soft soap. A neighbor but a stone's throw distant set 

 out some fine primates about the same time that I set out my trees. He does 

 not believe in tlie use of soft soap, practically at least, and his trees are sorely 

 disfigured and greatly injured by the Saperda Candida and the S. cretata, while 

 my trees are smooth and admired by all. I have some pear trees in the same 

 orchard which were not treated with the soap, one of which has been much 

 injured by the borers. 



This year I used the undiluted carbolic mixture instead of the soft soap. I 

 fully believe this to be an improvement on the soap alone, as in some cases, if 

 but one or even two applications of the soap are made, the effect is not so long 

 continued as to entirely prevent the borers from egg laying. The carbolic acid 

 will tend to extend the period so that I believe two applications will in every 

 case repel the beetles. 



