514 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
CABBAGE APHIS. OTHER REMEDIES. 
thoroughly. I should then inclose and treat another portion of the 
plants in the same manner, and another, until I had gone over the 
whole. Tobacco smoke will cleanse any plant from lice where it 
is so applied as to penetrate between the leaves sufficiently to reach 
every insect upon them. And this is the only known remedy 
which is certain and infallible. All others are merely palliative. 
Soap suds, which are so often recommended, will kill all the 
young tender lice, and leave most of the old ones alive, to each 
commence founding a new colony. 
Mr. Curtis, in his Farm Insects, p. 70, makes the following re¬ 
marks on the subject of remedies for these cabbage plant-lice: 
Protected as the aphides are in tho wrinkles of the leaves, 
which they themselves have caused by tjhe pumping up and 
extravasion of the sap, it is, I think, impossible in the open field 
to apply any effectual remedy for the extirpation of this prolific 
tribe. When it is in our power, the best plan would be to cut off 
the diseased leaves as soon as the presence of the insects is detect¬ 
ed, and crush them completely under foot, or put them into a 
sack and carry them away to be destroyed by boiling water. 
Watering the plants with equal parts of tobacco-water and lime water 
is said to he the best mode of destroying the aphides in gardens; and 
if plants be washed with tobacco-water alone—about half a pound 
of tobacco to a half gallon of hot water — it will kill the aphides; 
and if applied warm it will kill them the sooner. Strewing 
tobacco on hot cinders will soon rid a green-house of this pest; 
and sprinkling tobacco-dust upon trees, when the dew is upon the 
leaves, is an infallible remedy; hut these applications would avail 
but little in the field, even if it were practicable to employ them. 
Sprinkling of lime-dust is likewise considered a very effective cure, 
but not in wet weather, rvhen the lime not only loses its caustic 
quality, but the aphides so perfectly secrete themselves, that it is 
impossible to annoy them. I have been astonished to see plants 
swarming with them on the first dry day after long continued and 
very heavy rains. 
