76 COLORADO POTATO-BEETLE. 



even fatally, both the plants and the operator. With regard to its 

 injury to the plants, I believe it can always be sufficiently obvia- 

 ted by largely diluting the poison with flour or ashes. The iormer 

 is preferred, because if applied when the plants are wet with rain 

 or dew, it makes a paste which prevents the poison from being 

 blown from the vines. Experiments would seem to show that the 

 poison is about equally effective upon the insects, whether diluted 

 with five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty times its bulk of flour. And 

 the more it can be diluted without destroying its efficacy, the less 

 injurious, of eourse, it will be to the vines, and tiie more widely 

 it can be difi'used at the same expense. 



Considering the extremely poisonous nature of this substance, 

 and the very considerable extent to which it has been used, it is 

 remarkable that, so far as I am aware at least, no case of death 

 from its use ae an insect-destroyer is on record. The only proba- 

 ble exception to this statement that has come to my knowledge ' 

 was in the case ofa child four years old, in my own neighborhood, 

 who, together with a still younger brother, was taken suddenly 

 sick with very suspicious symptoms, after playing amongst some 

 potato vines near the house, to which Paris-green had been applied. 

 These children were taken with griping, and vomiting, and purg- 

 ino- of orreen colored matter, and in a week from the time of the 

 attack, the older one died. This case was, to say the least, of so 

 very suspicious a character, that it made me much more careful 

 in using and recommending this poison, and I immediately pub- 

 lished a caution in some of the papers against the use of it in any 

 place to which children would be likely to resort. 



With regard to to the method of applying this substance, there is 

 no simpler and more eff'ectual way than to shake it from a gauze 

 bag tied to the end of a stick, the operator always taking the pre- 

 caution to stand so that the wind shall not blow the powder to- 

 wards him. 



The remarkable success which has attended the use of the Paris, 

 green for the destruction of the Potato- bug, has very naturally 

 raised the query whether this poison would not be an equally ef- 

 fective remedy against other noxious insects, and a good many 

 interesting experiments have been performed to test this question. 

 Experience shows, what we indeed should suspect, that this poison 

 is speedily fatal to all foliage-eating insects, but not to those which 



