It was the second year of the Early Rose potato excitement, when we paid a dollar a pound for the seed. And it was the first appearance of the potato bug in Illinois. Determined to save the potatoes, we hand-picked the bugs for several weeks, but any one who saw the myriads of bugs that swarmed everywhere, can judge what that job meant. Driven to an extremity after trying experiment upon experiment to no purpose, kerosene oil suggested itself. How to use it was the question. Crude oil destroyed everything it touched. Studying over it one day, a cloud of dust suggested the way. I filled an old pail with road dust and then poured oil into it until the mixture was of the consistence of damp ashes - not wet, not moist, but still permeated thoroughly. The first application through a sifter started every bug. They flew off or disappeared. By continuing the applications, I harvested over a peck, of tubers from one small potato, and from that peck planted again that season, I had enough Early Rose to test on the table and plant all the ground I could spare in a small garden the next year. In one form or another I have used kerosene since.

Fill a clam shell, or better, a tin spice box with oil, and place it in the center of the cucumber or squash vines, and the yellow striped bug will keep away. Try the dust I speak of above, only be careful of making it too moist on the leaves of plants. I know of nothing that can stand kerosene. Many housekeepers use it in washing clothes. A gentleman now living in Connecticut told me that when he lived in Pennsylvania where the crude oil could readily be obtained, that he used it most successfully in croup, giving it internally and applying it externally. - Salis.