Pesthouse

“ But the mules did not like it, and after nightfall they hiked back on the trail, and it was a long and arduous work to gather them next morning.
I have touched above on the insect pests. Men unused to the South American wilderness speak with awe of the danger therein from jaguars, crocodiles, and poisonous snakes. In reality, the danger from these sources is trivial, much less than the danger of being run down by an automobile at home. But at times the torment of insect plagues can hardly be exaggerated. There are many different species of mosquitoes, some of them bearers of disease. ”

“ The pestiferous miasma of the pools is certain destruction to health, and the few who are needed at the distant post-houses, crawl out to the road-side like so many victims from a pest-house, stooping with weakness, hollow-eyed, and apparently insensible to everything. ”

“ One had even crawled down to my foot, and made an incision which allowed the blood to pour out through my canvas shoe. All this day we have suffered from these disgusting pests. Our horses became quite striped with their own blood, and a dog that followed us looked as if he had run through a pool of clotted gore before we reached the highway again. Of all the pests I have experienced in the tropics, or in any land, whether mosquitoes, black flies, ants, snakes, or viler vermin, these are the most annoying and disgusting. ”

“ The department of agriculture has made a study of the house centipede which of late has spread from the Southern States to a number of Northern States, and has issued a bulletin in which some of its characteristics are set forth. It thrives in most places and devours various house pests, such as moths, roaches, flies, probably even bedbugs, and others. It does not injure household goods, woolens, et cetera, as is commonly supposed. Its bite is somewhat poisonous, but it seldom bites human beings except in self-defense. ”

“ The worst of them are plant lice, mealy bugs, white and black flies, red spider, and the various scales. All are fought with pretty much the same weapons—namely, soap and water, smoke, and eternal vigilance. Greenhouses and hothouses are almost universally infested. ”

“ Usually, these insects are not present in sufficient numbers to cause serious injury until mid or late summer. Infestations earlier in the season rarely assume damaging proportions. As is the case with mites, aphid populations may increase, following the application of certain insecticides applied for the control of the pecan nut casebearer or following treatment with bordeaux mixture for pecan scab disease control. ”

“ No one kind can long overrun its fellows. If one does get a start and increases until it becomes a pest or plague, some enemy is sure sooner or later to spring up to destroy it. We use this method in fighting some of the insect pests which are injuring our trees. Men have searched in various parts of the world from which such pests as the gypsy moth and the San José scale have come to find some of their enemies and bring them to this country to feed on these insects. ”

“ These pests, which throughout this low country are the largest and most numerous we have ever met, are bred in the intermediate swamps, which exist only through the negligence of the neighboring villagers. At night smoldering fires, which half suffocate the human inmates, are built before the doors and windows to keep out the intruding insects. All travelers wear gloves, and a huge hood covering the head and face up to the eyes, and in their hands carry a horse-tail switch to lash back and forth over their shoulders. ”

“ Men, scantily attired, might have been seen stretched indolently in every patch of shade along the shelter of each house, fanning their perspiring faces with wide-brimmed hats. Insect pests, prominent among which appeared flying ants and malevolent 'bulldogs,' revelled in the thick air, to feed joyously off abundance of human and animal flesh. ”

“ Every head of the Department of Sanitation in an American city would profit by a study of Col. Gorgas’s methods in dealing with the problems of dirt, sewage, and infection. Indeed many of the ideas he developed are already being adapted to the needs of North American municipalities. It is becoming quite evident that the scientific method of controlling insect pests by destroying their breeding places is the only efficient one. ”

“ Cairn did not hesitate to turn and run for the stair, and as he did so the spiders began to drop. Indeed, they seemed to leap toward the intruders, until the floor all about them, and the bottom steps of the stair, presented a mass of black, moving insects.
A perfect panic fear seized upon them. At every step spiders crunched beneath their feet. The poisonous insects seemed to come from nowhere, to be conjured up out of the darkness, until the whole cellar, the stairs, the very fetid air about them, became black and nauseous. ”

“ The sources of infestation are many, and the invasion of a house is not necessarily due to neglect, though the continued presence of the pests is quite another matter. In apartments and closely placed houses they are known to invade new quarters by migration. ”

“ Insect-pests are to be destroyed by poisoning them not with acrid mineral poisons which damage plants as well as the insects, but by encouraging the spread of the disease-producing bacteria which are known to be fatal to such insects. Professor Hagen, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has called attention to the old practice of destroying greenhouse pests by the application of yeast. ”

“ A ladybird beetle, which has also been imported, is the most effective agent in keeping this pest in check.
Insects of the House or Storehouse.—Weevils are the greatest pests, frequently ruining tons of stored corn, wheat, and other cereals. Roaches will eat almost anything, even clothing; they are especially fond of all kinds of breadstuffs. The carpet beetle is a recognized foe of the housekeeper, the larvæ feeding upon all sorts of woolen material. The larvæ of the clothes moth do an immense amount of damage, especially to stored clothing. ”

“ One of the houses shows menacing patches of brown specks on the plastering of a tiny bedroom—that means the larvæ of 82vermin. In a hole in the midst of each patch are the live insects. The friendly rent-collector makes a careful note of the fact. There is an evil day in store for this common pest of the tenants in old houses, when the Association shall bring its batteries of formidable disinfectants to bear. The Association is not fond of spreading wall-paper over the surfaces where insects live and thrive. ”

“ Such insects go deep into the cracks of woodwork and beams. Ordinary fumigating will not eradicate them. A single session with this deadly gas, however, will rid the house both of these pests and their eggs.
The things that may be the matter with an old house, as enumerated here, may sound very forbidding but circumstances alter cases. It is doubtful if any one structure will be afflicted with all these ills of decay and neglect. In our own house hunting we saw many that were sound enough so that, with the addition of modern conveniences and a good cleaning, they were livable. ”

“ The procedure almost invariably followed where parasites are concerned, consists in either dusting the plants with some chemical in the form of a powder, or spraying it with a liquid, or occasionally in enveloping the plant in some gas, in each case poisonous to the insect- or fungus-pest. The principal rules to be observed are: (1) the poison employed must be sufficiently strong or concentrated to kill the parasite, but not sufficiently powerful to injure the host ”

“ In like manner, the army worm may be defeated by burning up her eggs with the grass-stalks in which they are deposited. Or we may enlist in our service the natural enemies of the various insect-pests, such as birds, toads, snakes. But their greatest foes are "those of their own household," predaceous or cannibal and parasitic insects. The study of the habits of these insect allies and insect enemies of the husbandman is the occupation of the practical entomologist. ”

“ When the plague of locusts overran the length and breadth of the land, the police were sent out to organise beaters and instruct the villagers how to destroy the terrible pest. Another plague, that of rats, the jerboa rat, which travels like a kangaroo by leaps and bounds and eats up everything it meets, was to be grappled with by the police, and though they do not seem to have been very effective in destroying the pest, it became their business to pay out the rewards for all the vermin killed. ”

“ Over this conflagration I would silently smoke my pipe and husband my meagre allowance of rum and water, and this was frequently the most pleasant hour of the twenty-four, as, keeping well to windward, neither flames nor smoke incommoded me in the least.
Among the many insect pests, whose view of the beauties of the fire differed in all probability from my own, were those extremely disgusting creatures, yclept “Flying Bugs,” which are of a greenish colour, about the 104 size of a lady-bird; and which, on the slightest provocation, emit their horrible effluvia. ”

“ Fifth Annual Report on the Noxious, Beneficial and other Insects of the State of Missouri. By Charles V. Riley, State Entomologist. 1873.
That abundance of correct information about the habits of noxious insects should be diffused among farmers is a thing of capital importance. Many insect-pests, which in former times ravaged the fields and orchards with impunity, are now easily held in check, or exterminated, owing to the enlarged knowledge derived from the researches of scientific entomologists. ”

“ Concerning Bugs and Fleas, and the trade carried on in the manufacture and vending of poisons to destroy these pests, we learn from him: The vending of bug-poison in the London streets is seldom followed as a regular source of living. He has met with persons who remembered to have seen men selling packets of vermin poison; but to find out the venders themselves was next to an impossibility. The men seem to take merely to the business as a living when all other sources have failed. ”

“ Overcrowding.—​The tendency to overcrowd, especially in household gardens, is to be avoided; a favourite habit is to plant something in every available space. Under such conditions pests and diseases will abound, and before attempting to spread over a large area, and so lessen the effect of their depredations, they concentrate in mass formation within the confines of the garden as long as the food supply lasts; further, plants tend to be less vigorous and more susceptible to infestation under crowded than under more open conditions. ”

“ Why this should be so, we have never troubled our heads to inquire; we simply accept the fact as it is. Possibly our floor, that, in spite of a daily brooming and a weekly sluicing, is ever well carpeted with dust and mud, is one source of these pests. And, now I think of it, there is a nightly scuffling underneath the boards, which leads to the conclusion that pigs, dogs, and fowls, are harbouring among the piles beneath.
Every night, before turning in, we are accustomed to shake whole regiments of fleas out of our blankets. Not infrequently we sprinkle the blankets with kerosene oil ”

“ If you have a severe infestation, or one that is behind paneled or plastered walls, or in some other hard-to-reach place, it may be that only an experienced pest-control operator with the proper equipment can do a satisfactory job. ”

“ In addition they do their full share of the evil work of bird extermination, wherein they have active allies in the rats and wild cats. On the whole, however, though acclimatization has given the Colony one or two plagues and some minor nuisances, it would be ridiculous to pretend that these for a moment weigh in the scale against its good works. Most of the vegetable pests, though they may flourish abnormally for a few years in the virgin soil, soon become less vigorous. With the growth of population even the rabbit ceases to be a serious evil, except to a few half-empty tracts. ”

“ As soon as we turn nature upside down, as we have nearly done in many sections of the country, we are bound to bring in these pests. It would be well in any law—and I know in this state we would consider a law, and an experimental station could have charge of work connected therewith—that one of the provisions we would insist on being put in the law would be one to control the pests which may come. ”

“ Beside these most common of pests already mentioned, pests which attack many kinds of plants, there are special pests for special plants. Discouraging, is it not? Beans have pests of their own; so have potatoes and cabbages, as George well knows. In fact, the vegetable garden has many inhabitants. In the flower garden lice are very bothersome, the cutworm and the slug have a good time there, too, and ants often get very numerous as the season advances. But for real discouraging insect troubles the vegetable garden takes the prize. ”

“ It could not be expected that even the most charitable would receive plague-stricken wayfarers into their own families, nor would such a thing be right. Yet they could not remain by the wayside to die and infect the air. So they were removed by the bearers appointed to that gruesome work to these smaller pest houses, and only too often from thence to the pit in the course of a few hours. ”