344 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVII. No. 1214: 



THE JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE AS A WAR 

 PLANT 



In the March number of the Scientific 

 Monthly, Professor T. D. A. Cockerell puh- 

 lishes an interesting article entitled " The 

 Girasole, or Jerusalem Artichoke, a ITeglected 

 Source of Food." It will be interesting to 

 add that the French Academy of Agriculture 

 has by no means overlooked this important 

 plant, the French name of which is topinam- 

 hour. For the last two or three years the Comp- 

 tes Eendus des Seances de 1' Academic d' Agri- 

 culture has contained frequent references to 

 the value of this crop, most of the communica- 

 tions having been made by M. Schribaux. In 

 the last number, which comes to my desk to- 

 day, M. Schribaux presents an interesting 

 communication from M. Thiry, director of the 

 Agricultural School of Tomblaine near ISTancy. 

 He says that in a normal year only about a 

 hundred hectares are planted in Lorraine, but 

 he believes that the plant is capable of render- 

 ing great services. In his own family they 

 have regularly raised and eaten the topinam- 

 lour since at least 1860. All of the agricul- 

 tural land in Lorraine is not well adapted to 

 its cultivation, only light lands being best 

 adapted. In general, they feed the tubers to 

 the horses, giving a little to the pigs, but never 

 to the cattle, for they think that this diet 

 gives the milk a bluish tinge. He states that 

 the crop is more productive than potatoes, and 

 they often raise at Tomblaine thirty thousand 

 kilograms to the hectare. He uses the variety 

 called patate by ViLmorin. It has more regu- 

 lar tubers, and while not less productive is 

 more delicate than the ordinary variety. He 

 has eaten them in his house for a long time, 

 since he tasted Jerusalem artichokes in Eng- 

 land, and he has fed them to the children of 

 the refugees whom he has taken in. Last 

 year the people of ISTancy wished to eat them, 

 since potatoes were out of their reach, but at 

 that time they were beginning to germinate 

 and were not edible. He thinks the plant is 

 a very remarkable one, and that in fertile 

 earth well worked it will repay the labor of the 

 farmer with great interest. Whether the cli- 

 mate is severe or dry, and even when the earth 



is poor and weedy, the crop will still be satis- 

 factory, and it lacks the diseases of the potato. 

 He believes it to be a war plant of the first 

 order. He thinks that a serious effort should 

 be made to propagate this vegetable in all 

 France. L. O. Howard 



Washington, D. C. 



poisoning tree parasites with cyanide 

 of potassium 



Some three years ago there was discussion in 

 this journal of the method of killing insect 

 parasites of fruit trees by placing cyanide of 

 potassium under the bark. Success was re- 

 ported from such inoculation of peach trees. 

 Others rejwrted that cyanide of potassium 

 mLxed with other poisons, when used in the 

 same manner, caused the death of the tree 

 within two or three years. 



Three years ago, in the spring, I bored half 

 inch holes in each of six apple and pear trees 

 and filling these holes with powdered cyanide 

 of potassium, " chemically pure," plugged them 

 up. Four of these trees were apparently dying 

 from scale, the other two were infested but not 

 dying. During the summer all six became 

 free from scale and the four dying ones began 

 to recuperate. In the fall both the apple and 

 the pear trees bore good fruit which was 

 palatable and harmless. All the trees are 

 now healthy and vigorous after three years, 

 and there are no areas of dead bark around 

 the inoculation holes. 



This seems an indication that inoculation 

 with cyanide of potassium, when used with- 

 out admixture of other drugs, is not necessarily 

 injurious to apple and pear trees. Its effec- 

 tiveness as a parasite exterminant is rendered 

 doubtful, however, by the fact that the scale 

 died on all my other trees which were not 

 inoculated. One of these trees was prac- 

 tically dead at that time, having lost all but 

 two of its branches, but it is now vigorous. 

 I lost two good trees from scale before this. 

 Scale had been becoming more and more 

 troublesome in northern Ohio for a number of 

 years, but three years ago many infested trees 

 became entirely free or almost free from the 

 pest, and in this whole region there was 

 marked improvement in the orchards, which 



