AGRICULTURE. 267 



cover a pint of wheat with boiling water, and keep hot till all 

 the water has been soaked up ; then pulverize an ounce of 

 strychnine, mix it well with the hot wheat ; add two ounces of 

 brown sugar, and stir that up with the mass ; then add four 

 ounces of corn meal to serve for drying and covering the moist 

 kernels. Wheat thus prepared will keep a long time after it 

 is dried, and three or four grains dropped in a squirrel hole 

 will have a perceptible effect. Pieces of watermelon and of 

 sweet apple, sprinkled with powdered strychnine and placed 

 near the squirrel holes, are good. 



Phosphorus is dissolved by hot molasses or water. The 

 molasses with phosphorus is mixed with wheat and flour, and 

 small quantities of the mixture are dropped into the holes. By 

 another method the wheat is soaked in boiling water until it is 

 soft, when the water is drawn off, and a stick of phosphorus 

 three inches long put into the hot water, melts in ten minutes, 

 and the wheat is stirred about well, so that the melted phos- 

 phorus will touch every grain. Tiie wheat is then poured 

 upon some bran, in which it is rolled, so that every kernel may 

 be covered ; and the grain is ready for its purposes of destruc- 

 tion. A couple of kernels will kill a squirrel ; and if a cat 

 eats the squirrel, it will kill him ; and if a raven picks out the 

 eyes of the cat, he will die too. Such a progessive destruction 

 has been observed more than once in California. 



The squirrels may also be killed by soaking a rag in kero- 

 sene, sprinkling it with sulphur, setting it on tire, throwing it 

 into a squirrel hole, and filling the mouth of the hole carefully 

 with dirt, and of every other hole where the smoke appears in 

 the vicinity. Sometimes several burrows are connected. In 

 one case eighty squirrels were thus killed with one rag. A 

 bellows with a chamber for burning sulphur has been devised 

 for blowing poisonous fumes into the holes. But in defiance 

 of these ingenious methods to destroy them, the pests are still 

 numerous. 



