A Deadly Gas

A Deadly Gas.

Millers and the owners of grain elevators look upon the bisulphide of carbon as one of their most useful agents. When a mill, an elevator or a granary becomes infested with weevil, bisulphide of carbon is the cheapest and most effective thing to exterminate the pest. So deadly is the gas, however, and so rapidly does it act that the utmost care must be taken in applying the bisulphide. It is usually sprinkled over the grain from watering pots. The liquid is rapidly converted into a gas, and the latter sinks through the grain, carrying death to the weevil and even to the unhatched eggs.

So long as the persons applying the liquid stand above the point of application they are pretty safe from the fumes, but, occasionally the workmen breathe a little of the gas and have to be removed at once to the open air, as the heart is quickly paralyzed by the action of the bisulphide. It is usual to treat the lower floors of a granary first, so that those employed in the work may keep constantly above the gas. Any animal, as a cat or a dog, shut up in an apartment where the bisulphide is doing its work is found dead when tho place is opened.-Chigago Inter-Ocean.