193 



GRAZING IN ORCHARDS SPRAYED WITH 

 POISONOUS WASHES. 



Poisonous solutions are used on the farm for various pur- 

 poses, such as the destruction of animal parasites (sheep dips), 

 the prevention and cure of animal diseases (copper sulphate in 

 the treatment of foot rot), the destruction of weeds ("weed 

 killers " and sprays for destroying charlock), the destruction 

 of insects on plants (fruit tree "washes"), in the form of 

 poisoned baits for the destruction of injurious insects (scattering 

 poisoned clover, lucerne, &c. over fields for the destruction of 

 surface caterpillars). Poisons are also used in other forms, for 

 instance as powder (hellebore), or vapour (cyanide of potassium 

 fumes). 



Though cases have been recorded of animals having died 

 through eating grass contaminated by the dripping of recently- 

 dipped sheep, and it is conceivable that injury might also 

 arise when copper sulphate is employed as a foot dressing 

 without due precaution, yet with ordinary care the poisoning 

 of pasture in this, way should be impossible. There is 

 no recorded case, so far as is known, of injury having been 

 caused to. live stock by their breaking into fields where the crop 

 has been recently sprayed with a solution of copper sulphate. 



" Washes " applied to standard fruit trees can only, except 

 by accident, get into the system of animals in large quantities, 

 when the ground underneath the trees grows a crop of grass or 

 other fodder crop on which some of the solution may fall and 

 be eaten with the crop. How much of the solution may reach 

 the ground will depend upon a variety of circumstances, such 

 as the quantity of " wash " applied, the state of foliage, the 

 density of stocking of the trees, &c. These factors are difficult 



N 



