1 Apri, 1902.] | QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 801 
INSECT TORMENTORS OF HORSES. 
The Chasseur illustré says that a decoction of 1 part of stramonium 
leayes to 3 parts of water, boiled for 20 minutes and applied, when cool, to 
the face, about the ears, inside the legs, about the belly and croup, is sufficient 
to keep a horse free from its insect tormentors during a whole day. Stra- 
monium is said to be much more efficacious when thus tised than tobacco. 
PRECAUTIONS TO BE TAKEN BY CONSUMERS OF 
VEGETABLES. 
Extract from ) Agriculture Moderne. 
We (La Revue Agricole del’Ile Maurice) think it will be useful to 
reproduce a paragraph inserted in the Agriculture Mcderne relative to the 
treatment which raw vegetables should undergo before being eaten. 
The recommendations by Dr. Ceserole have all the more importance in 
hygiene, as market garden produce in the colonies is often treated with liquid 
manure. 
It has for a long time been known that intestinal worms are generally 
transmitted to us through the medium of vegetables. Dr. Ceserole, of Padua, 
has devoted careful study to the subject; he has examined the sediment of 
sterilised water in which various market vegetables had been washed, such as 
lettuce, endive, radish, celery, &c. The microscupe revealed in this water the 
presence of fifty-two common species of fauna. 
But, besides these parasites, Dr. Ceserole found a. number of 
-microbes—notably, a bacillus analogous to that of typhoid fever, the septic 
bacillus, and the bacillus of tetanus. 
This infection of the vegetables is especially to be imputed to watering 
them with liquid manure. Great care has consequently to be exercised. 
Lately, Metchnikof, of the Pasteur Institute, has discovered that a certain 
number of parasites appeared to have their origin in intestinal worms. 
Dr. Ceserole recommends that, to avoid danger, the vegetables previously 
well washed should be plunged for half-an-hour into a 8 per cent. solution 
of tartaric acid, which has an agreeable flavour, is cheap, and of great anti- 
septic power. 
THE CURE OF SNAKE-BITE. 
In an article recently published on the prevention of deaths from snake- 
bites, M. Henri de Parville cites several well-authenticated cases in which the 
anti-venomous serum of Dr. Calmette, head of the Pasteur Institute at Lille, 
has been the means of saving life. 
Dr. Calmette, it may be remembered, was himself bitten on the hand by 
a cobra when experimenting in his laboratory a short time ago, and only 
escaped death by the application of the serum discovered by himself. A 
mining engineer, in a letter to the writer from Australia, also relates how he 
was bitten in October by a deadly serpent, and an hour afterwards was fast 
losing consciousness, when the timely intervention of Dr. Calmette’s antidote 
brought him back to life. 
But the most striking testimony to the value of the French professor's 
serum comes from India, where a woman was recently bitten by a venomous 
snake of unusually large dimensions, and cured when she was at the point 
of death. 
To prepare the serum, the venom has to be procured from living serpents, 
and it was while engaged in this risky operation that Dr. Calmette came near 
losing his life. The Pasteur Institutes at Lille and Paris forward consign- 
ments of the saving serum to all countries in which venomous serpents are 
found.— Australian Field. 
