64 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 84 



that even today, when the insecticide industry has assumed enormous 

 proportions, the trained economic entomologist remembers all the 

 time that his main idea must be to find some means of controlling 

 insects that will obviate the use of expensive chemical and mechani- 

 cal measures such as spraying and dusting. 



The advance of the Colorado potato beetle was viewed with the 

 utmost alarm by the potato growers of the East in the early i86o's, 

 and nothing effective against it was proposed until some one — no one 

 knows exactly who — began to use Paris green. Down to that time the 

 vines had been treated with hellebore and with ashes, and the larvae 

 had been jarred off laboriously by hand into pans. On May 28, 1869, 

 George Liddle, Sr., wrote from Fairplay, Wisconsin, to the Editor of 

 the Galena (Illinois) Gazette and stated that if one would take one 

 pound of Paris green and mix with two pounds of flour and sift 

 through a coarse muslin cloth on the potato tops early in the morning 

 when the dew was on, the larvae would drop to the ground by thou- 

 sands. He further stated that this three pounds of the mixture would 

 answer for an acre of potatoes. 



Commenting on this in the July, 1869, number of The American En- 

 tomologist, the editors recommended this as the most eifectual and 

 probably the cheapest remedy. They stated that they had tried Paris 

 green and ashes the previous year (Mr. Liddle had stated that he 

 tried it in 1868) and though it killed most of the larvae it did not seem 

 to affect the beetles. They were inclined to believe that the Paris 

 green used was not a good quality. Experimenting again in 1869, 

 the editors had excellent results. 



From this beginning, the use of Paris green spread with the spread 

 of the potato beetle, and remains today the standard remedy against 

 this insect. 



It was some time before it was used against another insect. In 

 1872 Doctor LeBaron suggested spraying fruit trees with Paris green 

 and water against cankerworms. Riley in the same year suggested its 

 use against the cotton caterpillar in the South. 



LeBaron's recommendation was adopted to a limited extent in the 

 orchards of Illinois, in 1873. Four years later Cook renewed this 

 advice in Michigan, but guardedly. In spraying an orchard in Niagara 

 County, New York, for the cankerworm in 1878, Edward P. Haynes, 

 under the advice of J. S. Woodward of Lockport, New York, found 

 that the apples on the sprayed part of the orchard were less eaten by 

 codling moths than in the other parts of the orchard. Mr. Woodward 

 reported this fact at the January, 1879, meeting of the West New 

 York Horticultural Society, and was almost hooted. Corroborative 



