MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 235 



Method of Destroying the Acarus, or Red Spider, Slugs, and other 

 Insects on Plants, without injuring the Leaves. — In all the recipes for 

 destroying Acari which I have seen, sulphur is an ingredient; this, in its crude 

 state, will not unite with the liquids used for that purpose, and therefore it can 

 have little or no effect, except when applied as a wash on the heated flues of a 

 house. In order to make it unite with soapsuds, tobacco water, and other liquids 

 usually made use of for destroying insects, it must be converted into a sulphuret, 

 by boiling it with lime or an alkaline salt, as in the following mixture, which 

 expeditiously and effectually destroys the red spider, by merely immersing the 

 plant, or part infested, in the mixture. 



Common soft soap, half an ounce; sulphuret of lime, one ounce by measure, 

 or two tablespoonfuls ; soft water (hot), one ale quart. The soap and sulphuret 

 to be first well mixed with an iron or wooden spoon, in the same manner as a 

 mixture of egg and oil is made for a salad; the hot water is then to be added 

 by degrees, stirring the mixture well with a painter's brush, as in making a 

 lather, by which means an uniform fluid will be obtained, like whey, without any 

 sediment, which may be used as soon as it is cool enough to bear the hand in it. 



This mixture will destroy every insect usually found in the greenhouse, by 

 mere immersion, except the coccus, or scaly insect, which adheres so closely to 

 the stem, or under side of the leaf, that the mixture cannot reach its vulnerable 

 parts; therefore, in this case, the mixture must be applied with a brush that 

 will dislodge the insect. If the mixture be put into a wooden bowl, or any other 

 shallow vessel, small plants in pots, and the leaves and branches of larger ones, and 

 of fruit trees, may be easily immersed in it by pressing them down with the hand. 



The above mixture will not destroy the black aphides of the cherry-tree, nor 

 the green aphides of the plum-tree, by immersing the leaves and branches of it, 

 there being an oiliness on these insects which prevents its adhering to them. 

 It will destroy them by applying it with a brush, but this is too tedious a 

 process. It has been recommended, by writers on horticulture, to wash these 

 and other fruit-trees against walls before the leaves and buds appear, with 

 mixtures which cannot be safely applied after ; for which purpose the above 

 mixture, with the addition of spirits of turpentine, is likely to succeed as well as 

 nny other, or better; but I have not yet had an opportunity of giving it a trial. 

 Half an ounce, by measure, of spirits of turpentine being first well mixed with 

 the soap, and the sulphuret and water added as before; or the wash may be 

 made stronger, by adding twice the quantity of each ingredient to the same 

 quantity of water. 



For destroying slugs and worms there is no recipe so simple, attended with so 

 little trouble, and, when properly applied, so effectual, as common lime water. 

 The plants on which the slugs are found must be watered with it twice at least, 

 at an interval of three or four minutes. If you place three or four slugs on the 

 ground, and pour lime-water on them from a watering-pan, you will soon perceive 

 them throwing off a kind of slough, and after that crawling away; but if you 

 sprinkle them again with the lime-water, they will not be able to throw off 

 another slough, and soon die after the second operation. When a person has, 

 therefore, watered as many plants as takes up the time of three or four minutes, 

 lie must turn back to the place where he began, and water them again. 



Lime-water, for this purpose, may be easily made, so as to be always ready. 

 Into a trough, containing about 55 gallons of water, throw in two or three 

 shovelfuls of lime, stir it up three or four times on that day, and the next day 

 the liquor is clear and fit for use, and will continue to answer the purpose for 

 some time, without adding any fresh lime, by stirring it up again before it is 

 used, and let it settle. If the lime-water be of sufficient strength, it will 

 destroy the large grey snail with twice watering, and all worms that are out of 

 the ground at the time of watering, and it will not injure the most tender plant 

 when used in a clear state. — Gardener's Gazelle. 



Hot-wateii Apparatus. — Your correspondent, Mr. Beaton, in a recent number 

 o 1 ' the "Gardeners' Chronicle," remarks that he likes Mr. Corbett's open-trough 

 system of heating with hot water, but appears rather to doubt whether the vapour 

 can he confined sufficiently lor ripening fruit. We are able to answer any objec- 

 tions on this point, as we have this summer (not one in which the son's rays have 



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