170 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



house ; and, after getting those insects well established, I 

 began to dose them. To one I gave Paris green, to another 

 London purple, to another kerosene emulsion, and so 

 on. I sent out circular letters to all the names I could 

 get of cranberry growers in the State. A good many 

 of them answered the questions I asked as well as they 

 could. Some of the questions were quite difficult to answer. 

 I found that most of the people were afraid of the poisonous 

 insecticides, and they had not obtained very good results in 

 the use of them. I experimented in this way. I measured 

 out, with the utmost care, with very delicate balances, the 

 Paris green, — for we have always had better success willi 

 Paris green than we have with London purple ; and I found 

 that I could kill the so-called fire worm with Paris green in 

 the proportion of one pound of the poison to three or four 

 hundred gallons of water. I put the insects right onto the 

 plants ; I counted them, and knew where every individual 

 was, so that there was no missing one, and then I watched 

 them. They drew two or three leaves together and fed 

 inside, protected from anything that could be thrown onto 

 them. The kerosene emulsion would not reach them, because 

 they were closed in. They had brought two or three leaves 

 together, had spun a silk web around them, and were as 

 closely hedged in as possible. Then they would eat their 

 way through the leaves. It took them twenty-four hours to 

 do it ; then they got a taste of the Paris green on the outside 

 of the leaf, and died, every one of them. There was no 

 failure to kill them as thoroughly as I could desire. Then I 

 instituted a series of experiments of a similar kind upon sev- 

 eral of the bogs on Cape Cod. I marked out certain squares, 

 a rod square here and a rod square there, and so on, — 

 a whole series of such patches. But I $id not get the 

 results there that I did on the bog that I had at home. 

 I find that when I trust somebody else to do the work for 

 me, especially if it be an elderly person, he is pretty a pi 

 to have notions of his own, and docs not follow my direc- 

 tions so closely as I could wish. 



I have grown a great many insects, in order that I might 

 be able to tell tin* effect of insecticides upon them. I think 

 " doubting Thomas" would have made a good entomologist. 



