318 
cents per pound. On the other hand, I found that the recent discovery 
of mixing London purple with lime, thus avoiding any scorching of 
the plants, has remained entirely unknown in the South. At any rate, 
the cost of material, which in former years formed one of the principal 
objections to tbe application of arsenical poisons in dry form, plays 
now rather a subordinate role, as will presently be shown. 
A uniform mode of ai^plieation of arsenical poisons prevails now 
throughout the cotton belt, and to anyone who has witnessed the mode 
of warfare against the cotton worm, as largely practiced in 1879 and 
1880, the contrast must appear a most striking one. At that time the 
whole energy and ingenuity of the South as well as of the men employed 
in the government investigations of the cotton worm were directed 
toward the improvement of the application of arsenical poisons in 
liquid form. That all the numerous sprinklers, spraying machines, and 
nozzles, which were then invented, are now altogether discarded; that 
the two important inventions made in the course of the government 
investigation, viz, the cyclone nozzle and the kerosene emulsion, should 
prove to be preeminently useful against all sorts of other insect pests, 
but not against the cotton worm — all this forms certainly a remark- 
able chapter in the history of economic entomology. 
To be sure everyone recognized at that time the superiority of the 
dry application of Paris green over all other remedies, but this method 
as then practiced was a very costly one, and the general desire of 
lessening the cost of and poisoning many rows at once led toward the 
efforts to improve the wet application. However, the magnitude of the 
chief objection to this method, although frequently alluded to in the 
published reports, viz, the difficulty in obtaining water on most cotton 
fields, had been greatly underrated. Moreover it was generally found 
that all spraying machines could, on account of their weight, only 
operate with difficulty om heavy soils and in wet weather; finally, the 
machines after having been used for one season were found to be ren- 
dered useless by rust the next season. Thus after one or two trials 
with the spraying machines the planters generally returned to the dry 
application, and the old method, viz, mixing the poison with a larger or 
smaller quantity of flour and sifting it over the plants by means of a 
bread sieve * still largely prevails with owners of small fields, especially 
in Texas. 
The larger planters in the States visited by me have now generally 
adopted the u pole-system," which has been practiced by individual 
farmers as early as 1878. This method is now so universally known 
that a further explanation is unnecessary; it suffices to say that the 
pole itself, the mode of fastening the bags, the material of which the 
latter is made, vary greatly according to the individual experience of 
the planters, and that only one improvement — but a very important one — 
* See Comstock's Cotton Insect Report, p. 246, aud Riley's Report, p. 141. 
