If you sweep the insect net over bushes or through the grass in midsummer, you will be pretty sure to draw in a good collection of leaf hoppers.
Most of us are only too well acquainted with the rose-leaf hopper that swarms on rose bushes and kills the leaves. If we have not noticed the insect itself, we have not failed to notice the little white skins that it has cast off and left clinging to the leaves.
Yes, these are the little skins it discards when it moults.
John says we can kill them by washing the bushes with strong soap suds.
Ned says it is better yet to spray them.
It is better and also easier to spray them than to wash them.
You know there are machines for spraying trees and other plants. They consist of a tank to hold the liquid that is to be sprayed and a pump to force it through a rubber pipe with a sprinkler at the end.
Very often a mixture of soap and kerosene oil, known as "kerosene emulsion," is used to spray with.
Paris green and blue vitriol, both very poisonous, are often used on grape vines before the grapes are formed, and very gaudy vines they are for a little while after this bright poison has been sprayed upon them.