INSECTICIDES, PREVENTIVES, AND MACHINERY. 455 



or less amount of expense for the diluting substance. Yet, when 

 such an application is advantageous, we find that there are very 

 few machines on the market for making it. The most elaborate 

 and practical machine is the Leggett * ' Champion Powder-Gun, ' ' 

 which, by means of a fan-blower, distributes dry insecticides in a 

 very fine dust. With this machine, pure Paris green or London 

 purple can be applied so thoroughly that all parts of a plant 

 may be covered ; and as extension tubes and bent tips are fur- 

 nished, small trees or high bushes can be conveniently reached. 

 This is, I think, the best of the machines on the market for dis- 

 tributing dry powders of all kinds. It is manufactured by Leg- 

 gett & Brother, New York City, at a price of about $7.50. 



There is a variety of smaller bellows made by other manu- 

 facturers, but they are scarcely practical for use on a large scale. 

 Those sent out from the Hammond Slug-Shot Works are as 

 satisfactory and as low in price as any, and the * ' Woodason 

 Bellows," sold by most seedsmen and dealers in insecticides, are 

 also effective on a small scale. In this short list the machinery 

 for the application of dry powders is practically exhausted. There 

 have been many other machines produced and patented, and in 

 the reports of the United States Entomological Commission there 

 are numerous cuts and figures of expensive dusting arrangements, 

 none of which are in use at the present day. On the other 

 hand, the tendency is all towards simplicity. A great many 

 farmers who apply dry powders use the most rudimentary kinds 

 of dusters, — perforated tin pans or the like. The cotton growers 

 of the South have originated for their purpose a simple and very 

 effective method of applying dry Paris green, and perhaps this 

 will prove practical in other cases as well. It consists of a flex- 

 ible, tough pole, to each end of which a coarse cloth sack, filled 

 with pure Paris green or London purple, is tied. The stick is 

 rested across the back of a mule, which is slowly driven between 

 the rows of cotton, and the rider, striking continually with a 

 short stick on the flexible pole bearing the bags, jars them suffi- 

 ciently to dust out a very fine powdering of the poison. Practi- 

 cally, this is the most satisfactory method of applying the arse- 

 nites on cotton-plants that has been discovered, and it is now in 

 almost universal use where poisons are applied against the cotton- 

 worm. The method is extremely simple, and modifications of it 



