Insect Pests of House and Garden. 669 



and with a sponge or rag, sometimes assisted by an old tooth-brush, 

 thoroughly wash the infested plants, thus removing the insects. It 

 is necessary to repeat this operation in a week or two to get those that 

 were missed before with their progeny. One should always thoroughly 

 rinse off the plants with water after these soap applications. 



X. Pests of Dooryard Plants. 



The housewife's flower-bed, rose bushes, sweet peas and other plants 

 which she may attempt to grow near the house may frequently suffer 

 from insect attack. Plant-lice, leaf-hoppers, the so-called " red spider," 

 and the small, green slugs or " worms," all often occur on roses 

 at the same time. Sweet peas are often ruined by the red spider; 

 asters and the buds of dahlias and similar plants are often "blighted" 

 by the punctures of the little tarnished plant-bug; and the blossoms 

 of asters, chrysanthemums and the like sometimes swarm with blister- 

 beetles. 



Leaf -hoppers are the small, whitish, active little creatures that often 

 swarm on the under sides of the leaves of roses, leaping into the air upon 

 the slightest disturbance of the bush. They suck their food from the 

 leaves like plant-lice. The green slugs eat the leaves and finally trans- 

 form into small, black sawflies. The tarnished plant-bug is another 

 sucking insect, which abounds almost everywhere that plants of any 

 kind grow. The blister-beetles are quite large, slender, blackish beetles 

 which eat blossoms and soon render them unsightly. 



The housewife should be equipped with one of the smaller sprayers, 

 like a hand-atomizer or a bucket-pump. With one of these machines 

 loaded with a whale-oil soap solution, kerosene emulsion or tobacco 

 decoction, the plant-lice, leaf-hoppers and " red spiders " can be easily 

 controlled by several applications at intervals of a week or so. If good 

 water pressure is available, these insects can usually be kept in check 

 with a forceful water-spray frequently applied. As the slugs are chewing 

 insects, they can be easily fed a dose of poison by either spraying on a 

 Paris green mixture (one pound in 150 gallons of water) or by dusting 

 on hellebore. No method has yet been devised for preventing the 

 tarnished plant-bug from blighting the buds of flowering plants. This 

 insect breeds in such large numbers in near-by grass-lands that fresh 

 recruits are always at hand. The simplest and surest method of stop- 

 ping the depredations of blister-beetles is either to hand-pick or knock 

 them off into pans of kerosene. 



