20 PEEFACE. 



for almost every injurious insect, and claiming 

 public gratitude for his procedure, it is probable that 

 the Government will have to be called upon to 

 interfere in the matter of the reckless use of this 

 arsenical poison. Already much valuable stock 

 has been sacrificed to the preservation of the potato- 

 plants, which a little care and industry would have 

 otherwise protected; and cases of the poisoning of 

 farmers and their families by maliciously disposed 

 "hands" and servants have been reported in the 

 daily press. For some years I have been calling 

 public attention to the reckless use of Paris Green 

 as an insecticide, especially fearing its introduction 

 into the South. It is true that the use of Paris 

 Green has saved a good many crops of potatoes in 

 the United States from the attacks of the Dory- 

 phora or Potato-Beetle ; but lime applied to the 

 young insects, and an industrious use of the beat- 

 ing process, would have efiPected the same result. 

 When applied to the cotton-plant, as Professor Riley 

 recommends, Paris Green is open to objections. 

 Under their good nature and general acquiescence 

 in their condition of life, to which their extraordi- 

 nary adaptiveness and capacity for copying the 

 manners of the whites assists, the negroes in the 

 Southern States have shown a certain readiness for 

 the commission of revengeful crimes ; and the 

 wholesale use of such a poison as Paris Green on 

 plantations would give them a ready and suggestive 

 instrument to their hands. Being a mineral poison, 

 and filtering into the soil, Paris Green is also dan- 

 gerous in a country where surface- wells are used. 



