, 
SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
= 
the grower as there has been of: recent years, there is little immediat, 
prospect of any supplies being diverted to the manufacture of starch 
It certainly would not suit the growers to sell to factories while housq_ 
wives are able to pay higher prices. In previous years, during a glut 
potatoes have frequently been unsaleable, and starch was then soma. 
times made on the farms. There is nothing complicated about the 
process, and all that is necessary to insure the success of a factory }, 
a sufficiency and continuity of supply. Several State Departments 1) 
the United States have been studying the question of the suitability af 
potato flour for mixing with wheaten flour. Its use for this purpose 
does not lack advocates, who emphasize the wholesomeness of. white 
bread when made from an appropriate mixture of the two flours. }; 
is claimed that the potato on oxidation in the body produces an alkaline 
ash, while white flour on oxidation produces an acid ash favouring the 
production of acidosis. 
FUMIGATION INVESTIGATIONS. 
Fumigation is not yet practised to any large extent in Australia to 
combat noxious insects, but it is inevitable that much greater attention 
must be given to this question in the very near future. The rapid 
expansion of the citrus area and the opening up of new and widely 
remote areas is bound to be followed by the dissemination of red scale 
and other pests, and with a large increase in production the attainment 
of quality will have to be closely studied, In the United States radicg] — 
changes are being brought about in the fruit, nursery, and grain iy. | 
dustries by the use of hydrocyanie acid gas and carbon bisulphide, and 
since their general application, which dates back only nine or ten 
years, a great number of valuable investigations have been carried out — 
at the different experimental stations. An important innovation js — 
the use of liquid hydrocyanic acid in the place of the pot-generated gas. 
In the latest number to hand of the Journal of Heonomic Entomology, | 
Mr. R. S. Woglum describes the results of extensive experiments, whith 
included operations covering several hundred acres of orange and — 
lemon trees, both large and small, infested with black and red scale. 
In this work liquid hydrocyanic acid, 95 to 98 per cent. pure, Was — 
used, the application being made in the form of a spray by special | 
machines designed for this purpose. The comparative efficacy of the 
liquid hydroeyanic acid and pot-generated gas favours the former, 
so far as the bottom of the trees is concerned, but the total result for 
the whole tree is slightly favorable to the pot treatment, and shows 
that, under the stated conditions, 16.56 cubie centimetres of liquid 
hydrocyanie gas is insufficient to produce results equivalent to 1 oz. 
of sodium cyanide in pot-generation. In the case of the black scale” 
the results indicated a decided economy of material over the require- 
ments of pot-fumigated trees. To the Australian growers the chief — 
point of interest lies in the fact that liquid hydrocyanic gas is being 
thoroughly tested, and that experiments have gone far enough to permit 
of a schedule being prepared for citrus-tree fumigation which will 
approximate uniform results in orchard treatment regardless of the size 
of the tree, and will prove fully as satisfactory as the original schedule 
prepared for pot fumigation. 
| 
| 
20 “ | 
