Says a correspondent of the Garden: "The best insecticide, and the safest I have ever met with, is nicotine soap, which, from containing the active properties of tobacco with other ingredients, is fatal to insects, and has a marvellously cleansing effect on the bark of trees, which it frees from all parasites in very quick time. For using on the stems of vines and peach trees it is quite unrivalled, as with a brush and a slight scrub, followed directly after by a dash of water from the syringe, it leaves them bright and polished, free from all slimy deposits and other confervae. At one time peaches and vines used to be daubed with a coat of liquid clay and other mixtures to smother scale, but with nicotine soap there is no need of this, and anyone who is troubled with that insect, or red spider, or thrip, has only to apply the wash to be rid of the pest. If on the young shoots of peaches, the best way is to syringe it on at a strength of four ounces to the gallon of water, used at a temperature of 900 or 100°, and immediately afterwards the stems of the trees should be scrubbed and the whole rinsed off at once.