244 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



THE USE OF PARIS GREEN. 



The Farmers' Review has a very inter- 

 esting letter on this subject from its regular 

 contributor, Prof. C. V. Riley, which is 

 worthy of special attention by all horti- 

 culturists. The Professor says that few 

 persons, have, perhaps, been more instru- 

 mental than himself in advocating the use 

 of Paris Green and London Purple as 

 remedies for special insects like the Colo- 

 rado Potato-beetle or the Cotton Worm, 

 and this not without pretty severe con- 

 demnation from some persons who had 

 never had any practical experience in com- 

 bating injurious insects. The tendency at 

 the present time seems to be to recommend 

 these arsenical compounds for almost all 

 insect pests of the farmer and fruit-grower, 

 and, while they may be advantageously 

 used against a very large number of leaf- 

 eating insects that affect, on the one hand, 

 plants, the leaves of which are not made 

 use of for food, or, on the other, trees 

 used for shade, he thinks there is a limit 

 beyond which it is unwise and unsafe to 

 employ such poisons, or to recommend 

 them. Mr. Riley continues : 



"Prof. Cook, of the Michigan Agricultural 

 College, has lately recommended them for 

 the killing of a strawberry leaf-beetle 

 {Pa7-ia aterrima Oliv.), which, as he shows, 

 lives in its larva state beneath the ground; 

 also for the destruction of the Apple Worm. 

 In the first instance it were eminently dan- 

 gerous to use such a poisonous remedy 

 while the plants are fruiting, and I would 

 not recommend it even later in the season, 

 until every other available remedy had 

 been tried. In the second case it is even 

 less to be recommended. It will, undoubt- 

 edly, serve to kill many of the first brood 

 of worms, and this is desirable; but there 

 is as good evidence that lime or plaster 

 dusted on to the young fruit has much the 

 same effect, while experience has shown 

 that the bandage system, and other methods 

 of fighting this insect, when judiciously 

 and persistently adopted from year to year, 

 are sufficient to insure a crop at trifling 

 cost. Finally, if the poison is so persistent 



in the calyx as to have any effect in de- 

 stroying the second brood of worms, that 

 will only heighten the danger to those 

 persons who subsequently eat the fruit. 



" The use of these poisons to destroy the 

 Canker Worm on young, non-bearing 

 orchards, or on bearing trees before the 

 fruit is set, is quite a different thing, and 

 attended with little, if any, risk." — Farmers' 

 Revic7v. 



DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS OF PREY. 



BY A. S. FULLER. 



" Out of the frying-pan into the fire," is 

 a quaint old saying that is as often appli- 

 cable to the wisdom of nations as to that 

 of individuals. Men who get one idea into 

 their heads and start out to build some 

 great and imposing structure with such a 

 limited capital, or attempt to regulate some 

 natural law which they imagine is not quite 

 as it should be, usually find that they have 

 made a miscalculation soniewhere, and their 

 schemes, for some unaccountable reason, 

 do not work quite satisfactorily to them- 

 selves or anyone else. In Europe, as well 

 as in America, the birds of prey {Raptores) 

 have been generally considered as enemies 

 of the farmer and gardener, on account of 

 their well-known habit of catching the 

 small insectivorous species, as well as in 

 the case of hawks and owls destroying 

 domestic fowls. But of late I notice that 

 the ornithologists of Great Britain are 

 again discussing the " Wild Birds Protec- 

 tion Act " very thoroughly, and they claim 

 that it is a great mistake to exclude the 

 " prey-catchers " and afford them no pro- 

 tection, and class them among the enemies 

 of the husbandman, because the hawks, 

 owls and other raptores not only destroy 

 mice, moles, rats and other vermin that 

 feed on grain, but they also catch and de- 

 vour thousands of sparrows and other 

 granivorous birds. A correspondent of 

 Land and JVater, in referring to this sub- 

 ject, says: 



" The gamekeeper, in his gross ignorance, be- 

 lieves that hawks, in gaining their legitimate 

 living, prefer game to other food, as though they 

 knew of the arbitrary distinction made only by 

 the laws of man ; and this is his sole reason fo'r 



