The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, Adapted to the Use of Private Families

are planted, so as to enclose them, and not one of these vermin will approach. When gooseberry or currant bushes are attacked, a very simple expedient will suffice. Put pieces of woollen rags in every bush, the caterpillars will take refuge in them during the night, and in the morning quantities of them may thus be taken and destroyed. If this do not succeed, dissolve an ounce of alum in a quart of tobacco liquor; and as soon as the leaves of the plants or bushes appear in the least corroded, sprinkle on the mixture with a brush. If any eggs be deposited, they never come forward after this application; and if changed into worms they will sicken and die, and fall off. Nothing is more effectual than to dust the leaves of plants with sulphur put into a piece of muslin, or thrown upon them with a dredging box: this not only destroys the insects, but materially promotes the health of the plants. When caterpillars attack fruit trees, they may be destroyed by a strong decoction of equal quantities of rue, wormwood, and tobacco, sprinkled on the leaves and branches while the fruit is ripening. Or take a chafing-dish of burning charcoal, place it under the branches of the bush or tree, and throw on it a little brimstone. The vapour of the sulphur, and the suffocating fume arising from the charcoal, will not only destroy all the insects, but prevent the plants from being infested with them any more that season. Black cankers, which commit great devastation among turnips, are best destroyed by turning a quantity of ducks into the field infested by them. Every fourth year these cankers become flies, when they deposit their eggs on the ground, and thus produce maggots. The flies on their first appearance settle on the trees, especially the oak, elm, and maple: in this state they should be shaken down on packsheets, and destroyed. If this were done before they begin to deposit their eggs on the ground, the ravages of the canker would in a great measure be prevented. CAUDLE.