THIS 
COI-OMBO. 
Added as a Suppkme.a Monthly to the " TBOPIVAL AQRICULTUBIST,' 
October 
The following pages include the Contents of the Agricultural Magazins for 
Vol. XIII.] 
OCTOBER, 1901, 
[No. 4. 
OCCASIONAL NOTES. 
) with 
to us 
reference 
in 
to 
connection 
the School 
t ii Garden and Nature Study move- 
Jfi. ment, Mr. John Spencer, Deputy 
to tie Chief of the Bureau of 
Ifature Study (Cornnell University, College of 
Agriculture) says Ycur cordial letter of recent 
date just to hand. I am considering how I may ask 
a favour with a minimum of trouble to you. The 
situation is this. During the past early summer, 
when speaking to any part of our 20,000 Junior 
Naturalists, I have always held them eurapt 
when I told them that a knowledge of their 
work has gone so far round the earth, that when 
they were fast asleep at midnight, people would 
be thinking about their midday meal and per- 
haps at that moment would be talking about 
them. I am wondering if you have near at 
hand any English-speaking children who would 
write me a letter about some common thing in 
their lives. Such would give great pleasure to 
our boys and girls. Such a letter would go from 
aehool to school and from town to town. Ceylon 
and your particular town would have an interest 
for them that it never had before, all because 
they would conceive they had some friends 
living there. There would be nothing within 
their power that young boys and girls would not 
do in reLuru. Some would be glad to send 
photographs of scenes connected with their homg 
and school life. With this idea in my mind I 
leave you to help me in its solutiou. — Yours 
eordi»lly, Jko. W. Spkncbe. 
We have before now recommended the utilis 
icg of all kitchen waste (bones, ashes, &c.,) fo 
garden purposes, and we M'ould again poiut out 
the way in \\\\\ch a valuable fertilizer could 
be prepared by iuterlayering wood ashes and 
bones in a cask, covering with a top layer of 
earth and keeping the whole moist till a 
comptete fertilizer containing nitrogen, phosphoric 
acid and potash is got. The Editor of the Cape 
Colony Agricultural Journal states in a note 
referring to this subject that kitchen bones 
contain about 50 per cent of phosphate of lime and 
3, per cent nitrogen ; average wood ashes 7 per cent 
of potash and 30 per cent lime. One or more casks 
should always be at hand for the preparation of this 
valuable fertilizer. The wood a.-hes used should 
be fresh ana dry, and old accumulations should 
always be dried, or better still, calcined, ^so 
that tliey may become caustic for acting on 
the bones.. If every village dwelling had some 
arrangement for collecting household rubbish, 
the gain to the occupants would be two-fold 
clean surroundings and a useful compost for the 
garden. 
In the Year Book of the Department of Agri- 
culture so far back as 1898 we find the follow- 
ing reference to the use of kerosene against the mos- 
quito: For the mosquito, kerosene has proved a very 
efBcient preventive. Applied at the rate of an 
ounce to fifteen square feet, to the surface of 
small ponds or stagnant water iu which mos 
quitoes are breeding, it forms a uniform film 
over the water and destroys all forms of aquatic 
iu««ct», including the larvee of the mo»quito 
