a tiling found useful in one locality; since then its 
serviceableness has been brought forward elsewhere in 
Cape Colony, and most strongly as of use in California, 
and looking at the great success of soft-soap washes 
now used on such a large scale for destroying Aphides 
(no distant relations of these “bugs”) in England, it 
appears well worth while to give one or two of the 
recipes for keeping down the pest in California; and 
likewise some of the methods of preparing the mixtures 
of soft-soap and mineral oil for safe and convenient use, 
which have been worked out since Prof. Trimen suggested 
something of this nature might probably be of use. 
If a minute’s thought is given to the subject it will 
he seen that the soft- or whale-oil soap cannot fail 
to be beneficial by sticking on the surface of the bugs, 
and choking their breathing-pores, and likewise by 
soaking under the egg-bags of the females and destroying 
both the young, which are on the point of escaping, as 
well as those which are exposed outside. It would also 
be to a certain extent a preventive to the infestation being 
blown about the country by the wind, a matter which 
Mr. Bairstow especially notes as one method of spread. 
One of the remedies recommended by Mr. Matthew 
Cooke for destruction of this scale-insect in California* 
is a wash of whale-oil, or soft-soap, sulphur, and tobacco, 
in the proportion of one pound of the soap to a third of 
a pound of sulphur, the sulphur to be boiled in water 
for ten or fifteen minutes and the soap then added, and 
to each gallon of this mixture one gallon of tobacco water 
to be added of the strength noted below.t The mixture 
to be applied at a temperature of 180° Fahr. 
In the above mixture no mention is made regarding 
method of dissolving the sulphur, and the following 
recipe for a soft-soap wash with the sulphur in solution 
might prove serviceable :— In order to make sulphur 
* See ‘Injurious Insects of the Orchard,’ &a., by Matthew Cooke (late 
Chief Executive Horticultural Officer of California), pp. 165—167, with 
account of “ Cottony Cushion Scale,” and references to receipts for appli¬ 
cations to destry the scale, in same work. 
+ Boil BO pounds of tobacco leaves in 80 gallons of water. 
