August 30, 1804. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



173 



spike is pushing- into life (which will be in about six weeks), 

 remove by degrees to full light and air. 



9. The more light and air given from the time the flowers 

 show colour, the shorter will be the leaves and spike, and 

 the brighter the colours of the flowers.— (W. Paul' s Lecture on 

 the Hyacinth.) 



PEOTECTING- WALL PEUIT FROM ANTS. 



Last year I was very much troubled with ants, and, al- 

 though I tried every remedy suggested to me, failed to get 

 rid of them. This year they were equally numerous and 

 troublesome, and commenced their depredations on my 

 Morello Cherries. I at once opened the campaign, deter- 

 mined if possible to conquer them. As I have a great ob- 

 jection to the use of poisons unless under great necessity, 

 I thought I would first try syringing the trees with a de- 

 coction of elder. This was a failure. I next tried a decoction 

 of quassia; but although it drove them away for a day or 

 two they soon returned. Pepper was the next application, 

 and that was only partially successful. 



They now began a vigorous attack on my Apricots. Here 

 I tried crude gas water poured under the trees against the 

 wall. On examining the fruit the next morning I found an 

 Apricot hanging within 6 inches of where the water had 

 been poured swarming with them. 



I thought I must now try poisons ; so obtained some cor- 

 rosive sublimate, strychnia, arsenic, and cyanide of potas- 

 sium. Each of these I separately mixed with either sugar, 

 honey, or treacle, and carefully placed them under inverted 

 flower-pots, the holes of which I closed to prevent bees from 

 entering. The ants had free access ; but with the exception 

 of the solution of cyanide of potassium and sugar, in which 

 I found four or five, I could not discover any dead lying 

 about. At first I thought perhaps other ants had removed 

 the bodies ; but a few days afterwards, on examining a piece 

 of paper on which I had placed some treacle and arsenic, I 

 found that while there was no trace whatever of treacle the 

 arsenic remained. Prom this I conclude, that where the 

 substance employed with the arsenic does not thoroughly 

 dissolve it, the ants can discriminate, and only take that 

 which is agreeable to them. 



Pinding that poison did not succeed, I placed some soot 

 along the base of the wall. This prevented their getting 

 up ; but I then found that they visited me from the opposite 

 side, and many took up their abode in the interstices of 

 the wall. 



My last, and I hope my most successful attempt, was with 

 gas tar, but not quite in the manner recommended in your 

 Journal. I first had one of the courses of bricks a few 

 inches from the ground tarred the complete length of the 

 wall ; and then, as I thought if tar were put on the trees it 

 might injure them, a slip of carpet was tied, round each stem. 

 This was also tarred over so as to completely insulate the 

 bearing part of the tree. Next I daubed some tar here and 

 there on the wall to drive off stragglers, and finally tarred 

 the top of the wall to prevent their return. This has now 

 been done some days, and since then up to the present time 

 I have not seen one on the walls. It is necessary to mix 

 some grease with the tar to prevent its drying, and should 

 the bricks absorb it rapidly a second or third coat would be 

 desirable. 



My object in troubling you with these remarks is more to 

 prevent your readers from using arsenic and such violent 

 poisons in their gardens than to show the advantage of tar, 

 as in the latter, I am aware, I am suggesting nothing new. 

 I may mention, to show how dangerous it would be to have 

 poisonous mixtures lying about, that a short time since I 

 placed in my greenhouse, with the intention of killing flies, 

 some treacle and quassia. Shortly afterwards I noticed on 

 two or three of the Grapes some little dark spots. These I 

 found to be the treacle, probably carried by wasps or some 

 of the larger flies. Suppose, instead of using quassia I had 

 employed some strong poison ! — Amateuk. 



Messes. Paul & Son's Roses. — In addition to Mr. W. 

 Paul's and Mr. Turner's Roses, as mentioned at page 146, 

 Messrs. Paul & Son's, of the Cheshunt Nurseries, were re- 

 quested by the Princess of Wales to be sent to Marlborough 

 House. 



NEW BOOE. 



UTILIZATION OP MINUTE LIFE. 



The Utilization of Minute Life ; being Practical Studies on In- 

 sects, Crustacea, Mollusca, Worms, Polypes, Infusoria, and 

 Sponges. By Dr. T. L. Phipson, P.C.S., London, &c. 

 London : Groombridge & Sons. 



The object of this interesting little volume is to give not 

 only a correct idea of various minute animal s, which either 

 are themselves, or whose products are utilized in various 

 arts and manufactures, but to inquire whether they " cannot 

 be submitted to culture, and propagated more extensively 

 by artificial means, and thereby the benefits derived from 

 them increased." The contents of the volume are divided 

 into chapters, devoted in succession to silk-producing insects, 

 colour -producing insects, insects producing wax, honey, &c, 

 insects employed as medicine and food by man, Crustacea, 

 mollusca, worms, polypes, infusoria, and sponges. We do 

 not object to such divisions, though they might be improved, 

 but we do complain that there is no index. Such a book 

 without an index is almost as embarrassing as an upper 

 chamber without a staircase. 



We can only afford space for one extract, but it will 

 enable our readers to form an estimate of the work. 



" Many philosophers, from the time of Priestley and In- 

 genhouz to the present day, have studied the influence of 

 light on vegetables, but few have paid attention to its action 

 upon the animal organism. Thus, whilst Priestley, Ingen- 

 houz, Sennebier, De Candolle, Carradori, Knight, Payer, 

 Macaire, and some others, made manifest the action of light 

 upon vegetable respiration, absorption, exhalation, &c. — in a 

 word, upon the phenomena of nutrition and development in 

 plants, Edwards and Morren were almost the only ob- 

 servers who studied animal life from the same point of view. 

 Edwards showed that without light the eggs of frogs cannot 

 be developed, and that the metamorphosis of tadpoles into 

 frogs cannot be effected in absolute darkness.* Again : 

 Moleschott has recently shown that the respiration of frogs 

 is most active in the daylight, diminishing considerably 

 during the night ; and Chailes Morren observed Infusoria 

 to evolve oxygen whilst basking in the sunbeams which play 

 upon the stagnant waters they inhabit. Later still, M. Berard 

 took a certain quantity of eggs of the fly (Musca Caasar) ; 

 he divided them into separate groups, and placed them 

 under different coloured glass jars. In four or five days, the 

 larvte produced under the blue and violet-coloured jars were 

 much larger and more fully developed than the others : 

 those hatched under the green jar were the smallest. The 

 blue and violet jars were found, therefore, to be most favour- 

 able to rapid and complete development ; then came the 

 red, yellow, and white (transparent) jars ; and last of all 

 the green. 



" The larva; developed in a given time under the influence 

 of violet light were more that three times as large as those 

 hatched and reared in green light.f 



" The experiments are certainly very interesting in a 

 practical point of view ; for if it be true, as it appears to be, 

 that the larger a silkworm is the more silk it will produce, 

 it would be worth while to repeat these experiments upon 

 silkworms, and endeavour to raise a large breed under violet 

 glass. 



" Nothing would be easier than to select a portion of some 

 silkworm establishment for the experiment, and to furnish 

 this section of the building with violet-coloured windows. 

 It would, indeed, be interesting to see these violet-coloured 

 panes become as necessary to the silk-breeders as the 

 yellow window is essential to the photographer. In the 

 former instance the violet would serve to allow the chemical 

 rays of light to pass, while the other rays are excluded. In 

 the latter, the yellow is used to cut off these chemical rays, 

 and to let pass the remainder." 



* Compare Higginbottam in " Proceedings of the Eoyal Society," 1862; 

 where some experiments of Edwards are refuted. 



t The effects of the sun's rays, when filtered through differently coloured 

 glass, upon the development of infusorial life, has recently occupied Mr. 

 Samuelson. He fitted up a box containing three compartments, covered by 

 a pane of blue, red, and yellow glass respectively, and found that under the 

 blue and red glass infusoria were rapidly developed, -whilst under the 

 yellow hardly any signs of life were visible. He then transferred a portion 

 of the infusion from the yellow to the blue compartment, when infusoria 

 very soon made their appearance. 



