EXPERIMENTS.

A lot of wire worms (Iulus sp.) brought in from potato hills were put into a tin can with about three inches of soil and some potato cuttings, and the soil was thoroughly moistened with kainit, one ounce to one pint of water.  Next morning all the specimens were dead.  A check lot in another can, moistened with water only, were healthy and lived for some days afterward.

A number of cabbage maggots placed on the soil impregnated with the solution died within twelve hours.

To test its actual killing power, used the solution, one ounce kainit to one pint water, to spray a rose bush badly infested with plant lice.  Effect, all the lice dead ten hours later; the younger forms were dropping within an hour.

Sprayed several heads of wheat with the solution, and within three hours all the aphides infesting them were dead.

Some experiments on hairy caterpillars resulted unsatisfactorily, the hair serving as a perfect protection against the spray, even from the atomizer.

To test its effect on the foliage, sprayed some tender shoots of rose and grape leaves, blossoms, and clusters of young fruit.  No bad effect observable 24 hours later.  There was on some of the leaves a fine glaze of salt crystals, and a decided salt taste was manifest on all.

Muriate of potash of the same strength was tested as follows:  Sprayed on some greenhouse camellias badly infested by mealy bugs, it killed nearly all within three hours, and six hours later not a living insect was found.  The plants were entirely uninjured by the application.

Thoroughly sprayed some rose bushes badly infested with aphides, and carried off some of the worst branches.  On these the lice were dead next morning; but on the bushes the effect was not so satisfactory, most of the winged forms and many mature wingless specimens were unaffected, while the terminal shoots and very young leaves were drooping as though frosted.  All, however, recovered later.

The same experiment repeated on other, hardier roses, resulted similarly so far as the effect on the aphides was concerned, but there was no injury to the plant.

Used this same mixture on the caterpillars of Orgyia leucostigma with unsatisfactory effect, and with the same results used it on a number of other larvae.  Used on the rose leaf roller, Cacaecia rosaceana, it was promptly effective.

Tested for injury to plants, it injured the foliage and flowers of wisteria, the younger leaves of maple and grape, and the finer kinds of roses.