Insecticides. 
BY JOHN M. STAHL. 
The most troublesome enemies of the 
gardener or orchardist, are insects. Frost 
troubles him only on very rare occasions 
if he plants in season: floods he can guard 
against by draining, and droughts he can 
mitigate by mulching. But the insects 
that attack his crops are numerous and 
hard to get rid of. It is utterly impossible 
to eradicate some from the soil and prevent 
their appearance; and to destroy them 
when they do appear, without injuring the 
plants upon which they feast, is generally 
difficult and hazardous, and frequently im¬ 
possible. 
Perhaps no member of the insect king¬ 
dom has given the gardener more trouble 
than the one which is responsible for the 
cabbage worm. I know of some gardeners 
and many farmers who have allowed this 
worm to destroy their cabbages for two 
and three years without any effort to get 
rid of the worm. Prof. Cook strongly rec¬ 
ommends the kerosene emulsion for this 
pest; but, while it is a comparatively effect¬ 
ive remedy, the difficulty of making the 
emulsion detracts much from its general 
availibility and value. Pyrethrum, or Per¬ 
sian insect powder, is a splendid remedy. 
The Rural New Yorker has strongly recom¬ 
mended it from the very first, and has done 
much to gain for it a more extended use. 
Prof. Lazenby, of the Ohio Experiment 
Station, says it has proven more effective 
than anything else tried at the Station 
for cabbage worms. Pyrethrum is very 
cheap and * asily applied. It also kills the 
currant worm when it comes in contact 
with the worm. But for the currant worm, 
the best remedy is probably white hellebore. 
It is almost unanimously declared effective 
by those who have used it for this (the cur¬ 
rant) worm. It mud not be forgotten that 
Paris Green and London Purple are poisons, 
and therefore should nev.er be applied to 
currants, gooseberry bushes or cabbages. 
There is no danger in applying these to po¬ 
tatoes because the tops are not eaten, and 
the Paris Green or London Purple does not 
reach the tubers. 
The wire-worm often causes devastation 
in the garden, and especially in the potato 
patch. It does not injure peas and beans, 
and it is generally supposed that it will not 
eat the roots of the legumes, and that the 
worms may be kept starved out of ground 
by frequently introducing some leguminous 
crop into the rotation. These worms are 
most apt to abound in sod ground, and it 
would always be the safer plan to make 
the first crop, at least, upon sod ground of 
some legume, following with potatoes or 
sweet corn when desired. The small, brown 
beetle, which can snap and spring up and 
light on its feet when turned on its back, is 
the beetle which lays the egg that makes 
the wire-worm. As the wire-worm lives a 
foraging life of five years under ground, it 
is apparent that it is a destructive larvae of 
an insect hard to kill. The most effective 
general remedies—those practicable upon 
large areas, occupied by farm crops—are 
fall and early spring plowing, with frequent 
stirrings of the ground, exposing worms to 
birds. But for the garden, the best remedy 
is the English, or potato, one. The English 
stick a potato in the ground, to which the 
wire-worms gather, and then the gardener 
lifts the potato with the worms, and after 
in this way ridding the ground of them he 
ventures to plant his crop. Prof. W. W. 
Tracy has tried the potato rrmedy and rec¬ 
ommends it. In his experiments he buried 
potatoes a few feet apart and a few inches 
deep, in infested melon and cucumber 
patches. The worms left the crop it was 
desired to protect and fed upon the pota¬ 
toes. The potatoes used as baits were 
found when examined to contain from 
eight to ten worms each. 
The latest published remedy for the cab¬ 
bage worm is, ice-cold water, or water a 
few degrees warmer than ice-water, sprink¬ 
led over the worms. It is stated that the 
cold water causes the worms to curl up, 
fall to the ground, and die, while the plants 
appear to be all the better for the cold bath 
they have received. This remedy is simple 
enough, but it presupposes the possession 
of an ice-house—something many gardeners 
have not. 
At the late meeting of the Kansas State 
Horticultural Society, these remedies were 
given for the ravages of the canker-worm 
