The weekly Floridian. [volume] (Tallahassee, Fla.) 1867-19??, 1882-05-16

per scre, even used according to old
pyrethrum, perfectly harmless to the
higher animals and plants, may be, more
or less. successfully used for this purpose,
simply mixed in water ct the ratio of
about one pound to shout one hundred
gallons of watsr; and have been for two
years disseminating the seed and endesv-
oring to establish its cultivation in all
sections of the country where it will grow,
and success thus far is quite encouraging.
Both the P@ethr7sm rosessna and the Py-
rstks1sm eiasrarjg folisna, which have
the ipsecticide properties, have fourished
in widely different latitudes, and some
plants of my own garden in this city have
passed uniniured alike the severe winter
of lse0-S1, and she rAild winter of 1881
80, and are now 6o1rishing. ~f.a
"The greater advance, however, has
been made in Improved appliances /
could not begin to enumerate the various
contrivances, whether for powdering or
spraying, whether by herse power or by
hand, that have been perfected and are
now being illustrated and described in .
final report already ordered by Congress
BY the adoption of an entirely new atom
iSing principle, conceived by one of my
assistants, Prof w. 8. Barnard-viz, the
rotating or cyclone principle-we are able
to throw spray of any extent desired
from the ground upward into the under
surface of the leaves, by minimum Of
power, made automatic if need be. With
the cyclone nozzle attached in multiple
to q wagon, and worked with a small
force pump, one barrel of poisoned liquid
will 60 thrice as far as by the old meth
DDS and will suffice for four to seven acres,
according to the size of the cotton and
height from the ground the spray must
be forced. 10 short, at first cost for ma
terial of one dollar per acre two men with
a team and wagon, can destroy all the
worms on from eight to sixteen rows of
cotton as fast as the team can walk"
Prof. Riley showed the great advan-
tages of the system of spraying from be-
low instead Of throwing broadcast from
above. He announced a discovery of
both scientific and practical interest re-
garding the Information of the cotton
worm. He said:
"There is nothing more fully estab-
lished now than that the moth hibernates
principally under the shelter of rank
wire grass in the more heavily timbered
portions of the South; that these moth
begin laying on the rattoon cotton when
this is only one inch or so high. That
the first few generations of worms are
rarely noticed, and never practically In
furious is due to the fact that they are
more generally dispersed, (the moth ap-
pearing to fly great distances, laying
here an egg and there an egg, instead of
hundreds on the same plant, as it does
later in the season,) few in numbers and
liable to the attacks of various enemies
just issuing from their winter quarters
and finding a scarcity of other food; also
to the less rapid development during the
spring months. Aside from the satisfac-
tion of bridging over so important gap
In the natural history of this destructive
insect the fact thus established has this
important economic hearing, whereas,
upon the theory of annual invasion from
some exotic country, there was no incen-
tive tn winter snrin0 work lonkinO tn
every incentive to such action as will de-
stroy it either by attacking it during mild
winter weather or by burning the grasses
in which it shelters. 1t should also be
warning to cotton growers to abandon
the slovenly method Of cultivation which
leaves the cotton stalks standing either
until the next crop is planted or long
after that event. For many planters have
the habit of planting seed in furrow be-
tween the old rows of stocks. The most
careful recent researches all tend to con-
firm the belief that the gossypium is the
only plant upon which the worm can
feed, so that in the light of the facts which
have presented to you there is all the
greater incentive to that mode of culture
which will prevent the growth of the rat
toon cotton, since it is very questionable
whether the moth would survive long
enough to perpetuate itself upon newly
sown cotton, except for the invention of
the rattoon cotton"