THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 421 



The mercuric salt should be dissolved in the alcohol in a wide-mouthed 

 bottle. The shellac should then be added and the bottle shaken from 

 time to time until it is thoroughly liquified. The varnish may be made 

 to match light or dark furniture as desired by using white or orange 

 shellac respectively. It should be applied with a paint brush to table or 

 refrigerator legs where food is kept, or to the supports for beehives, etc., 

 in a band from six to eight inches wide, thoroughly covering the surface 

 where applied. It dries perfectly hard in a few minutes and is abso- 

 lutely waterproof. It is strongly recommended for use in the household 

 where, if properly made and applied while fresh, it will remain effective 

 for more than one year without renewal. It is much more rapidly 

 exhausted when used on metal, such as stove legs, galvanized iron gar- 

 bage cans, unpainted metal bedposts, etc., than when painted on wood. 

 It is advisable to have such articles resting on wooden blocks previously 

 painted with the banding mixture, rather than paint it directly on to 

 the metal. 



The practicability of using this varnish to protect trees from invasion 

 by ants must await further experiment. In the few tests so far made 

 with it as a tree band ants were prevented, except for a few persistent 

 stragglers, from crossing for about two months. Ants which succeeded 

 in crossing became sick and many of them died. The band evidently 

 gives off a distinctly poisonous emanation. These tests were conducted 

 under the most severe conditions. Large numbers of ants were left in 

 the trees above the bands, and under such conditions the imprisoned 

 ants constantly attract, perhaps by stridulation, numbers of others from 

 below who then make extra efforts to get into the tree. 



Painting the mixture directly on to the trees resulted disastrously to 

 the bark, killing it clear through in a very short time. This injury, or 

 at least a great part of it, can probably be overcome by soaking strips 

 of heaA^ cloth in the varnish, allowing to dry, and applying like ordi- 

 nary ant tape. Considering the cost of alcohol and corrosive sublimate, 

 however, it is improbable that this band will ever be used to a large 

 extent on trees. Methyl alcohol is much cheaper than ethyl and will 

 dissolve a much larger proportion of mercuric chloride, but experiments 

 have shown that the repellent effect of the mercuric salt is in some way 

 destroyed by this alcohol which can not, therefore, be substituted. 



