lie on the ground is preparing for
a heavy crop of insects to eat his fruit the following summer.

Fruit and forest trees are both protected by a burlap band or a band of
"sticky" fly-paper placed around the tree, to prevent insects from
crawling up.

The use of poison in destroying insects is now the one most generally
and successfully employed by farmers and fruit growers.

Poisons may be liquid or dry. The liquid is made by mixing with water,
and for large plants and trees is put on with a spray or force-pump that
carries the poison to every part of the plant.

Some insects, such as beetles, caterpillars and grasshoppers, chew the
leaves or stems of plants, and the poison may be applied to their food;
but others, such as plant-lice, scale insects and all bugs suck the
juice, usually from the stem or bark. Poisons must be applied to the
insect itself to be effectual in this case.

These are some of the insect poisons most in use:

Paris green, which will kill all insects that chew the leaves, may be
used in small quantities in gardens by mixing one-half teaspoonful to a
gallon of water, or in large quantities with one pound to one hundred
and fifty or two hundred gallons of water.

White hellebore is used to destroy currant worms and is usually dusted
on dry.

Pyrethrum is used as a spray, mixing one ounce to two gallons of water,
to destroy cabbage-worms and many other garden insects. If the dry
pyrethrum powder is blown from a bellows into a tightly closed room, it
is said to destroy all the flies.

Bordeaux mixture is made by dissolving four pounds of copper sulphate in
hot water and mixing with an equal quantity of a solution made by mixing
four pounds of lime with water. This is then mixed with fifty gallons of
water. Paris green is sometimes added. This mixture is largely used in
orchards and for destroying insects on a large scale. It is also useful
for curing diseases of plants.

An excellent spray for orchards both for removing fungous diseases and
scale insects is a home-made lime-and-sulphur solution. Enough for
spraying a large orchard is prepared as follows:

Add three gallons of boiling water to fifteen pounds of lime. Then add
ten pounds of sulphur and three gallons more of hot water. Allow this to
boil about twenty minutes in its own heat, then add enough water to make
fifty gallons of the mixture. Dilute with water in the proportion of one
part of the solution to seventy-five of water.