A NEW WAY TO SLAY OLD PESTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2691, 11 October 1905, Page 10

A NEW WAY TO SLAY OLD PESTS.

Mr Strawson, of "Strawsoniser" fame, has brought out a handbook of outstanding interest and value to the agriculturist and horticulturist. It is entitled "Insects afd Fungi Injurious to Plants." In a notice of the treatise the N.B. Agriculturist fays: "The title is not so very different from that of Miss Ormerod's 'Manual of Injurious Insects,' and the entomological illustrations in Mr Stiawson's book are reproduced from the original drawings by Miss Ormerod which appeared in the Me-nual. But if the descriptions and drawings of the injurious insects arc pretty much the same as those in Miss Ormerod's Manual, ihe remedial treatment prescribed by Mr Strawson is absolutely new." It appears that when ho published his "Standard Fungicides and Insecticides" in Agriculture some 18 months ago he hinted that he was then on the track of a great discovery, which would place within the reach of the land cultivator a cheap and thoroughly efficient means of clearing the soil of all noxious insect pests by means of a substance which would slowly liberate a gas which would be death to the animal pests, bufc would be perfectly innocuous to the growing plants. Since then his researches and experiments have met with a degree of success which has exceeded even his most sanguine anticipations, and he is now able to announce that his "Vapourite Strawson" has proved a sure and certain remedy against such pests as wire-worms, slugs, daddy longlegs, turnip fly, eto. It is also a cheap remedy, and can be applied with a minimum of labour, as it is simply sown at the rate of 2cwt per acre before the soil is ploughed or drilled up, as the case may be, and by the gradual liberation of the gases contained in the vapourite the pests are asphyxiated in their burrows. Already the vapourite has been extensively and successfully treated on English farms and by gardeners. In ns& in greenhouses it killed all the insects, while all tlie planf-s were uninjured. After this the grower of greenhouse plants should be able by means of the vapourite to make short work of aphides and other such pests, just as the agriculturist, by its means, will give short shrift to the wire-worms, the claddj long-

legs, the turnip fly, and all that brood of noxious pests. "Mr Strawson," the N.B. Agriculturist remarks, "is a gentleman who has a high reputation to maintain, and it ie not at all likely that he would have published his claim to having made such an important discovery unless he were well able to substantiate it."