THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 263 



pests cannot endure fresh air and clean water. They prefer sickly 

 plants, half-starved plants, stifling atmospheres, and dirt. Look 

 through the stoves, and you will see a plant here and a plant there 

 beset with fly or spider. In nine cases out of every ten, removal to 

 a greenhouse will effect a perfect cure ; the cooler atmosphere will 

 restore the plants to health, and with returning health the insect 

 plagues will fly. 



Take another view of this preventive treatment. Here is a piece 

 of roses ; they have bloomed, and are evidently willing to grow ; 

 but see, has a miller been past and shaken flour over them ? Xo ; 

 that dusty look is one of the most awful plagues of the rose- 

 grower, and in spite of Gishurst, sulphur, and all the rest of the medi- 

 caments, it rages every year as soon as the ground to a depth of six 

 inches gets quite dry. Let us give up the sulphuring, and the rest of 

 the doctoring, and, as in the case just now stated, drive out the plague 

 by promoting a vigorous growth. A thin layer of guano and wood 

 ashes, or four inches of fat dung slightly pricked in with a fork, and 

 a deluge of water, will cause an immediate production of plump 

 green healthy shoots, and these healthy shoots will produce good 

 flowers, and the mildew will never touch them. True, mildew does 

 appear in damp cold seasons as in dry hot ones, but it is a most rare 

 thing in any season, when the trees are really in vigorous health ; it 

 is almost invariably the consequence of debility, and a vigorous 

 growth is the most certain preventive of its coming, and the best 

 means of removing it when it has already made its appearance. 



Now another word on preventive measures. There are certain 

 subjects that are invariably seized upon by vermin, so that they can 

 only be grown in very clean open spots, or when watched and tended 

 with extraordinary care. Take phloxes, pansies, carnations, dahlias, 

 and such soft-stemmed plants, and what can you do with them in an 

 old garden where there are walls covered with ivy, old fences, hedo;e- 

 rows, etc., etc., unless preventive measures are resorted to ? Yet 

 how simple it is to grow lettuces all the season through on the plots 

 appropriated to such things, and how diflerent is the case, then, as 

 to the fortune of the plants. Yet this very simple proceeding is 

 rarely thought of except by nurserymen, who, having to make their 

 bread and cheese out of their pansies and phloxes, and other her- 

 baceous plant.?, take care to have a lettuce to eat with it, and thus 

 the phloxes and pansies escape. I would not grow any soft-wooded 

 plant except groundsel or sow-thistle, if I did not grow lettuces 

 also ; and when the planting is all newly done, and the little lettuces 

 from seed-beds and seed-pans are newly put out, the ground looks 

 quite cheerful and pretty. By the time the lettuces form hearts, 

 and begin their procession to the table, the proper subjects of the 

 ground — the hollyhocks, the pinks, the pansies, the phloxes, the 

 pentstemons, etc., etc., are all out of danger ; their growth is too 

 far advanced to be cared for by snails and woodlice, and besides, the 

 lettuces have been used as traps from the first, and by searching 

 amongst them every morning, thousands of snails, slugs, woodlice, 

 and earwigs have been taken, for the benefit of the plants by 

 their loss, and of the fowls and ducks by their gain, for the 



