150 PLUM. 



The following recipe is one of the Department of Agri- 

 culture of the United States of America. In this the plan is 

 to add one gallon of water in which a quarter of a pound of 

 soft-soap (or any other coarse soap preferred) has been dis- 

 solved, boiling or hot, to two gallons of petroleum or other 

 mineral oil. The mixture is then churned, as it were, together 

 by means of a spray-nozzled syringe or double-action pump 

 for ten minutes, by means of which the oil, soap, and water 

 are so thoroughly combined that the mixture settles down 

 into a cream-like consistency, and does not, if the operation 

 has been properly performed, separate again. This is used 

 diluted with some three or four times its bulk of water for a 

 watering ; if required for a wash, at least nine times its bulk 

 is needed — that is, three gallons of " emulsion," as it is 

 termed, make thirty gallons of wash. Warning is given that 

 care must be taken with each neiv crop to ascertain the strength 

 that can he home hy the leafage, and this equally applies to all 

 applications to live hark. 



This point of testing the strength that can be borne by 

 different kinds of leafage and by leafage in different conditions 

 is exceedingly important, and so also is the matter of the 

 soft-soap and the mineral oil being so thoroughly incorporated 

 that they will not separate. If they do, the mineral oil will 

 be sure to cause much injury to the leafage on which it may 

 fall without being diluted by the soft-soap mixture. 



For those who do not care to be at the great trouble of 

 mixing the emulsion, it would save time and expense to try 

 the use instead of a mixture sold by Messrs. Morris, Little & 

 Son, Doncaster, under the name of " antipest." This is very 

 similar in ingredients to the " kerosine emulsion," and being 

 sold ready mixed and only needing further diluting saves 

 much trouble ; it is sold at a very cheap rate, and I have 

 used it for a good many years with success as an insecticide 

 in my own garden. 



Where there is plentiful water supply at hand, and also 

 means of throwing it with force, I have known much benefit 

 come from sending even this, with no additions, strongly at 

 the stems and branches; fairly "swilling" the tree down; 

 and where infested shoots with the leaves loaded with aphides 

 can be cut off without damage to the tree, enormous masses 

 of the pests may thus be removed and destroyed instead of 

 going on breeding and spreading infestation around. 



Amongst natural means of protection we have some help 

 from the aphis-eating birds ; but our chief assistance is from 

 the Coccinellidce, the beetles well known as "Ladybirds," 

 which feed (especially in the larval stage) voraciously on the 

 aphides. 



