MISCELLANEOUS. 587 



Eemarks. — He does not give the proportions; but equal parts might be used. 

 I see no use for castor oil at all. I believe the crude petroleum to be the 

 destroyer. See the next receipt for using kerosene to destroy Lice on Plants. 

 I think the kerosene would do as well, or perhaps better, on the rose-bugs Uiaa 

 the crude oil, and it can be put on handier with the atomizer than the thicker 

 oil with a brush. These bugs being on the under side of the leaf, the bush 

 must be bent over, or the atomizer carried under the leaves, as tobacco smoke 

 is done, or as the tobocco solution in No. 3. 



2. Lice on Plants— Successful Destroyer.— A correspondent of 

 the California Horticulturist, having exhausted all the known remedies for 

 destroying plant lice and other minute forms of insect life which play upon 

 plants, resorted to coal oil (kerosene) which proved a complete exterminator. 

 He says: " I procured from a druggist an atomizer, and filling the bottle with 

 kerosene, sprayed over a camelia to be experimented upon. It was a very dirty 

 plant, branches and leaves covered not only with scale; but with black fungus; 

 a very small quantity sufficed to vaporize and cover the entire plant. After the 

 fluid had evaporated and the plant was dry, the scales were found dead, shriv- 

 eled, and partly detached, and with the slightest touch fell off; the black fungus, 

 also, which everybody knows is so tenacious on the leaf, was dried up into a 

 loose powder, which a shake sent to the ground." 



3. Green Lice on Plants, To Destroy. — A writer says: "Steep 

 tobacco in water, and when the liquid is lukewarm, sprinkle the plants thor- 

 oughly with it. Two or three applications will cause them to hasten their 

 going, and generally prove sufficient to rid the plants entirely of them. If it 

 does not, repeat until the plants are free. The natural dried leaf is best, in the 

 proportion of one leaf to a quart of water, but any tobacco will do. The above 

 will not injure the most delicate plant, and is better than smoke, so often 

 recommended 



Remarks. —TYAs, can be applied much the handiest with an atomizer or 

 garden syringe, and if either of these are thoroughly used success is certain. 



4. Rose-Bugs Killed by the Pyrethrum Powder, if Properly 

 Applied. — The Rural New Tarker, among its brieflets, says; "The increasa 

 ©f the rose-bug is killed by pure pyrethrum powder, if blown upon it through 

 a beUows. 



Remarks. — There is not a doubt of this fact, when it is properly applied, 

 i. e., actually brought into contact with the bug, as it is a soft skinned mite, 

 and the poison is thus absorbed which must kill it. The only trouble is in not 

 being thorough and careful enough to reach all the bugs. The pyrethrum is 

 also known as the Caucasian or Persian insect powder. It is imported from 

 there under these names, and is very effectual in the destruction of insects upon 

 which it is freely blown, except those like squash-bugs, which have a hard shell 

 to protect them, allowing no absorption of the poisonous substances. The tech- 

 nical name of the plant is pyrethrum roseum, from rosa, the rose, arising, proba- 

 bly, from the fact of its destructive power over the rose-bug; at least I so reason, 

 unless its own flames resemble the rose, which is not as likely to have originated 

 Its name as the fact of its destructive powers over this insect. 



