220 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
ills that seemed to befall a citrus grove in 
Florida were scale insects, and if only 
this could be controlled, the citrus grow¬ 
er felt that all he had to do was to pick 
the golden fruit and jingle the golden dol¬ 
lars. This would have been quite true if 
greater evils had not been added to the 
existing ones. As early in 1881 Prof. H. 
G. Hubbard was stationed in Florida to 
investigate the insects of citrus. He was 
located at Crescent City, and responsible 
to Dr. C. V. Riley, Chief of the Division 
of Entomology. As a result of Profes¬ 
sor Hubbard’s work in Florida a bulletin 
was issued from the Division of Entomol¬ 
ogy covering the ground of citrus insects 
more extensively than anything that has 
since appeared. This bulletin has long- 
gone out of print and although originally 
it could have been obtained for the ask¬ 
ing, it now costs about ten cents a page 
to buy the bulletin, and even at that price 
there appear to be more buyers than sell¬ 
ers. 
Coincident with the work done by Prof. 
Hubbard in Florida was the rise of con¬ 
tact insecticides. Previous to that time 
the poisonous insecticides had been used 
largely in the form of Paris Green, for 
the destruction of the Colorado^ Potato 
Beetle and in some cases for grasshoppers. 
There was, however, a large class of in¬ 
sects which obtained their food supply by 
sucking it from the interior of the plant 
tissues that were not reached by the pois¬ 
onous insecticides. Dr. A. J. Cook, who 
is at the head of the California Horticul¬ 
tural Commission, appears to have been 
Mich. Agl. Exp. Sta., 1890. M. C. H. Bui. 
58 , 5 - 
the first to publish on the use of kerosene 
emulsion for handling insects of this class. 
This publication brought about a wordy 
and acrimonious battle bewteen Doctors 
Cook and Riley. Prof. Hubbard, before 
that time, had been using kerosene emul¬ 
sion at Crescent City, though apparently 
this had not been published to the world 
as the experiments were going on and 
methods were being perfected. 
During 1881-82, Prof. Hubbard was 
making experiments with kerosene 
emulsion made from condensed milk 
and kerosene. 
It appears from the records that Dr. J. 
C. Neal, then located at Archer, Fla., 
wrote to Dr. Riley (Oct. 10, 1882) in re¬ 
gard to the whale oil soap and kerosene 
emulsion formula that he used. He also 
had a formula that was made up of ordin¬ 
ary laundry soap and kerosene emulsion. 
This formula is practically the same as is 
used at the present time. It appears, how¬ 
ever, that these gentlemen were all ante¬ 
dated by Mr. George Cruikshank, of 
Whitinsville, Mass., who seems to have 
begun the use of a mixture of whale oil 
and kerosene emulsion as early as 1870. 
It is quite probable that these are a 
number of independent discoveries of how 
to make kerosene mix with water and 
was the beginning of our progress in the 
production of contact insecticides. 
From this period on there has been a 
very rapid movement and an almost end¬ 
less multiplication of contact insecticides, 
until now all you have to do is to name 
your bug and the specialist can tell you 
just what form of anaesthetic will put him 
Ann. Rept. U. S. Com. of Agr., 1881-82, 113, 
114. 
“T. E.,” Gardener’s Monthly, 1875, Feb., 45. 
