Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1870 — To Destroy the Currant Slug. [ARTICLE]

To Destroy the Currant Slug.

A number of remedies are recommended for destroying the currant slug, which of late years has become a pest, defoliating the bushes and causing the fruit to wither, or at least not to mature fully. Without speaking positively on the subject—not having had leisure to compare them critically—we believe the slug or little brown worm that cats up the leaves of the currant bushes, is identical with that making the same assault upon the rose bushes and grape leaves. A certain remedy is said to be “ green cedar bushes, cut in small pieces and scattered under the currant bushesand, it is added, “ there is something offensive about cedar to all bugs and worms, and they do not approach it." This may be true; but wo have no positive means at hand to prove it, and of course have no faith in it. We have had so many remedies of this kind for vermin of every description which have never proved their claims, that we have become a little “ jubis.” We kno# that the criptomeria and the arbor vitae are preferred by certain insects to attach to them their propagating houses, having with our own hands removed at least fifty from a single small tree; and have frequently seen the same nests on the American cedar on our own premises. • The best remedy, in our judgment, for this slug pest, Is the application of the solution of whale-oil-soap (as we have often before suggested) in the proportion of one pound to five gallons of water, sprinkled over the leaves from a watering-pot with a fine rose. It is certain death to all it touches.— Germantovm Telegraph.