BENEVOLENT POISONS

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3715, 19 October 1926, Page 2

BENEVOLENT POISONS

FRIENDS OF THE FARMER

HOW AMERICA KILLS THE PESTS OF THE FIELDS

Six tons of poison have been dusted from an aeroplane Hying over Peninsula Slate Park, Wisconsin, according to an announcement from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, in an effort to save 501 i acres of hemlock forest. Calcium arsenate was used in the air attack on worms which are said to have destroyed 6,OUU,UUUft of timber since last fall. “Poison has entered the ranks ol big business within the last fifteen years,” says a bulletin of the National Geographic Society Irom its headquarters in Washington, D.C. “ Poison is now broadcast over cotton fields as well as forests. Death-dealing poison is the policeman of orchards and vineyards, and a swatter of insects. It is guardian of water supplies, godlather to the grain crop, first assistant to the doctor, and aid to the veterinary. Many agencies arc booming the poison trade. “In Washington there is a threestory brick building. To all appearances it is a small apartment-house. There is a Herculean task going on in this smug lodging with flapping‘awnings. It is the task of converting the black art into a blessed science. “Occupying the third floor of the Insecticide and Fungicide Bureau are the laboratories which test all the poisons of those two classes used in the United States. Killing compounds must toe the mark of the Pure Poison Act passed by Congress in 1910. these laboratories are poison’s best friend. They helped develop the calcium arsenate formula which is the hope of the South against the ravages of the boll weevil. More recently they have found how to adapt the powerful poison of a beautiful chrysanthemum tor the preparation of a poison gas which is death to pestiferous flies, but which will not harm the higher animals, including humans.” , , , Laboratory workers and all students of chemistry know that certain of the ninety-five elements are bad chaiacters. Most of these elements, winch are enemies to life, lead Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde existences. Copper, that ready messenger boy of mankind, gets into bad company with sulphur Cop-per-sulphate will kill a bug instantly. Chlorine ingratiates itsell with mankind in the welcome guise of salt, but chlorine has vicious tendencies. Man hires this desperado chlorine to wipe out tribes of microbes in drinking water. In association with mercury it is useful in tanning, preserving wood, hat manufacture, and embalming, but its poisonous proclivities are so pronounced that it can be classed as a strong antiseptic. Other good-bad elements arc sulphur, lead, phosphoi us», and potassium. But the king of them all is arsenic. The debt the United States owes to arsenic, for exterminating insects, fighting fungi, bacteria, rats, mice, and gophers is incalculable. One recent year more than 14,UUU,0001b of arsenic . was distributed to the country districts of the United States in insecticides and fungicides. Yet search the country over and you will not find an arsenic mine in operalion, although the element is common. It occurs as a constituent of 130 minerals. The main supplies of arsenic arc obtained as by-products of Amei - can safety engineering and Amencan mines. There was a time when the smokestack of a smelter devastated the countryside round about like the wiatli o God. Irate property-owners sought protection of the law, and won damages Mining companies put engineers on the problem, and devices have been invented to make a smelter as harmless as a grocery. The engineers found that, in robbing the smelter smoke of its poisons, they collected sulphur, aisenic, ami compounds winch could be marketed. They feared at first that dumping quantities of arsenic on the market would lower the price to a ruinous level. But about to time the American farmer began yaking l the usefulness of poison in bis age-old light on insoots. After twenty years ol work Department of Agncultme ex ports had just found that the right adjustment of calcium arsenate made the boll weevil turn up its. toes. Contrarv to expectations, American mining concerns ‘conid not oven etch up wit ; tl™ demand of ood « hm the year ending Maj 31 the l nitea Stalls imported 13,000,00011) of arsenic Copper sulphate, lime, and vatei mixed together is death to worms and a boon to the cabbage crop, the beny and currant crop, and other ciops. it goes under the name of Bordeaux mixture because its uselulness was discovered l),v an odd. freak in » vmey«rd npnr the French wine town. A Inencli vigneron was exasperated with thieves who stole his grapes. So h e made a paste of chemicals which ho put on the outside vines all around his gaiden. Insect pests were the real thieves of the Bordeaux grapevines that yeai—that is, of most of the grapevines except the vines in the French peasant s noicon ring. A young scientist noticed the phenomenon. It gave him an idea. He experimented with the paste, determined the proper proportions, and the world has been using. Bordeaux mixture extensively ever since. Paris green, copper arsenate for years the best known insecticide, is Gradually being displaced by new and better workers. There is calcium aisenate, and there is lead arsenate. More than 17.000,0001b of lead arsenate was mixed last year, chiefly for use m orchards. “PERSIAN POWDER.” Simple chemical compounds are not the whole story. The benevolent poison trade is still dependent on the plant world, which was probably the original producer of deadly drugs. Strychnine is a. product of the round, hard seeds from fhc fruit of the mix vomica tree, which grows in the West Indies. Then there is pyrcthruin. It sounds like a new tooth paste. Pyrethrum swelled American import figures by ],461,000d0l last year, coining from such places as Krivolji and Cittaycccbia in Dalmatia, and Ki-i and Mikawa, Japan. , , “In old poison lore there is re toronce now and then,” we arc told. “ to pyrethrnm as Persian powder, renowned for killing bugs ol all kinds. Sonic of it may have reached Russia, but to Western Europe the powder’s powers wore largely herosay. so bugs thrived happily. But about the year 1800 an Armenian named Sumttoff discovered