CARBOLIC ACID FOR DESTROYING INSECTS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3153, 5 August 1881, Page 4

CARBOLIC ACID FOR DESTROYING INSECTS.

The very general employment of carbolic aoid for sanitary purpose.* induced a correspondent of the Vienna Illustrated Gardener who relates his experience in that journal to try whether it might not be applied wit!' equal advantage in some of the many diseases to which vegetables, as well as .flesh, are heirs. He first experimented with a solution of one part of tli c aoid in twenty parts of water, whioh was allowed to stand twenty-four hours before being used. By that time n layer of fat or oil had appeared on the surface, the contact of which with plant? gpeedily destroyed them. This was con eequently withdrawn by means of a. pipette, and clear fluid below alono used. This proved an equally dangirous application, for some beds of savoys and radishes, which were watered with it in order to free them from ground fleas, with which they were infested, wer<totally destroyed by it. A weaker solution consisting of one purfc of acid in fifty of water, proved scarcely lees injurious to vege tation. The application was now tried in the still more diluted form of one part in v hundred, the supernatant oil being carefully removed before use. In these proportions it answered admirably as an insecticide, without causing the slightest injury to even the tenderest plants. A single application effectually freed the beds from ground lice and similarly destructive vermin. A very 2:ai!l quantity introduced into an ant-hill bo disturbed its busy inhabitants that, contrary to all the habits of these insects, they abandoned their pulpte in their hurried flight. A cherry tree, whose ripe fruifc afforded a favourite hunting-ground for these ants, was at once protected from their visits by a elight application of the solution to its stem, though they returned to the attack in four or five days, when the pungent smell of the acid was lost. Their further depredations were once for all checked, however, by a girdle of cotton wool impregnated with the strong acid being bound round the trunk. Many other varieties of insects were kept at bay, or driven from thoir haunts by the same means, which also formed a most valuable protection against mildew, with which the rose and peach trees in the garden were sadly troubled. In one instance a rose tree which had borne no flowers for five previous years in consequence of mildew attacking the young stems of the buds immediately they are formed, was first observed to bear a magnificent crop the first season that a timely application of the solution waa made.