PROTECTION AGAINST MOSQUITOES AND FLIES

Kumara Times, Issue 1339, 15 January 1881, Page 2

PROTECTION AGAINST MOSQUITOES AND FLIES

~~+ ~ Quassia Vater is, according to a correspondent of Nature, a protection to peach trees against insect blight. The first year the trees bore well, and .the new wood was elbow length or more. I next tried Quassia in the Vinery. Instead of lime-washing the walls to get rid ot the green fly, one watering of quassia dismissed them in a day. My head gardener, who had previously much experience in nursery grounds, wondered that he he had never lueard of it before. He now uses it in alt cases as a protection from flies aud blight. The dilation goes a long way > one pound of chips of quassia wood boiled and reboiled in other water until he has eight gallons of the extract for his garden engine. He finds it inadvisable to use it stronger for some plant*. This boiling makes the qnassia adhesive, nnd being principally applipd to the underleaf, because most blight settles there, it is not readily washed off by the rain. Quassia is used in medicine as a tonic, and the chips are sold by chemists at from sixpence to a shilling a pound-. The tree is indigenous to the West Indies and to South America. And now as to gnats and mos"A young friend of mine, severely bitten by mosquitoes/ and unwilling to be seen so disfigured, sent for quassia chips, and had boiling water poured upon them. At nighr, aftef washing, she dipped her hands into the quassia water, and left it to dry on her face. T'iis was a perfect a,nd Continued to be so whenever applied At the approach of winter when flies and gnats get into houses and sometimes bite venemously, a grandchild of tnine, eighteen months old, was thus attacked. I the, nurse sotne of my weak solution of quassia to be left to dry on the face, and he was nofc bitten again. It is innocuous to children, and it may be a protection also against bed insects, which I have not had the opportunity of trying. When the solution of,; quassia is strong it is well known to be an active fly poisoo* and is mixed with "sugar to attract flies* but this not strong eiiough to kill at once. v .