66 DESTRUCTIVE INSECTS OF VICTORIA: 



destroy the insect if it be there, as frequent experiments 

 have shown us. I cannot imagine anything more absurd, 

 however, than the idea that there could be any arsenic in 

 the apples which had been sprayed, as soon as the flowers 

 had dropped, with Paris green. In the first place, the 

 quantity of poison is so small it is practically insoluble, 

 and above all it is not at all adhesive, so that directly the 

 small amount of moisture in it which is sprayed on to the 

 trees has evaporated it is a dry powder. Even supposing 

 you put it on as thickly as you could all over the fruit, 

 the natural expansion of the apple in growth would 

 disseminate it and force it off the surface ; the frequent 

 rains we get during the summer, and the frequent winds, 

 all help to remove it, and we know that it is entirely 

 gone, as proved by experiment, long before the harvest- 

 ing of the fruit takes place. Yet these articles appeared, 

 and our own papers copied them and commented upon 

 them. Now, this is where the injury conies in ; spraying 

 with arsenites is the remedy we have been trying for 

 years to persuade the farmers to adopt in order to protect 

 themselves from a great and unnecessary loss. I claim, by 

 application of this one remedy for the apple- worm, that a 

 saving of at least 75 per cent, can be made in the quantity 

 and quality of the fruit. Such articles raise a doubt as 

 to the advisability of using what is a good and safe 

 remedy. We are told : ' Paris green is poison, and 

 therefore is dangerous.' Of course it is poison, otherwise 

 it would not do the work we use it for, but the statement 

 as to the danger of poison getting into the apples is 

 absurd because impossible. The quantity used is so 

 small that the elements to which it is exposed would 

 destroy or remove it long before it could penetrate a 

 growing apple. Through the kindness of Mr. Woolver- 

 ton, the editor of the Canadian Horticulturist, I pro- 

 cured some apples that had been sprayed twice, and had 

 them analyzed most carefully by the chemist of the farm, 

 who took very great care to analyze them all by a process 

 by which, if there had been even one fifty-thousandth part 

 of a grain of arsenic in them, it could have been detected. 



