A correspondent of the Fruit Recorder writing from Port Huron, Michigan, says that he commenced a series of experiments for the purpose of discovering something that would kill the worms and yet not be poisonous to human beings, and finally found that a solution of common alum, made by dissolving one pound of alum in three gallons of rain water, would kill the worms.

His mode of proceeding was to dissolve the alum in a small quantity of water by heating the water, and then add sufficient water to make the whole three gallons. When this was cold he put it into a common watering-pot having a rose spout, and sprinkled his cabbage and cauliflower plants, keeping up this sprinkling as long as any of the insects were about, from the time that the white butterfly began to lay her eggs. He says that he watered them almost every evening, and thus kept his cabbage and cauliflower perfectly clean.

He also tried the alum solution on his currant bushes and with equally successful results, and recommends it for washing the trunks of young fruit trees, for the reason that it is a cheap, effectual and non-poisonous insecticide, acting instantaneously on the worm or caterpillar by means of its astringency and so contracting their tissues that they cannot breathe.