THE FLORAL WORLD AJ^D GARDEN GUIDE. 



133 



and there the Aphis is hidden by 

 swarms of ants running to and fro to 

 feast upon their sugary juices. The 

 pelargoniums are yeliow, shrivelled, 

 and going fast ; the fly has taken all 

 the sap out of them, aud death stares 

 them in the face. As for the primulas 

 and cinerarias, they are almost in- 

 visible ; you can trace where they 

 were by the outlines of the dead 

 leaves, and the crown of every plant 

 is grey with the cast-off" skins of the 

 myriad devourers. In the stove the 

 justicias are mottled a 1 over by the 

 depredations of red spider, and in the 

 succulent house scale has settled on 

 the stapelias and cacti, till their origi- 

 nal colours are no longer discernible. 

 It is enough to break the man's heart, 

 for his remedies are worse than his 

 diseases. If he uses sulphur or to- 

 bacco he is like to kill the plants, for, 

 says he, " they shall have it strong 

 enough;" and he burns it till he can 

 no longer breathe, and then hurries 

 out and slams the door behind him. 

 As to watering and shifting, he asks, 

 with some show of reason, "How am 

 I to do it. I've enough to do with the 

 vermin. Besides, I dread to see 

 things grow, every new shoot is new 

 food for the vermin ! so I'll have old, 

 hard, ripe wood, that no fly can pierce 

 and no scale adhere to." So he groans 

 away the best of his days, and if you 

 ask him why he doesn't give air and 

 repot the plants that look so starved, 

 he can only ejaculate, "Oh, the ver- 

 min." 



Just as he tells his tale about his 

 wretched vines to his neighbour, Mr. 

 Successful, so he goes to him with his 

 complaint of vermin. There are no 

 vermin in his rival's place, owing, no 

 doubt, to sorcery and the difference 

 of aspect; for Mr. Successful is not 

 exposed to the east wind. When 

 there, the other day, he saw a fine row 

 of Solanum capsieastrum, all loaded 

 with berries bright as vermilion, each 

 plant a foot high and a foot through, 

 as clean as if modelled in wax and 

 paper. " I can't grow that," say s he; 

 " I've tried, but had to burn the 

 plants: they were all fly; nothing 

 else visible about them." Mr. Suc- 

 cessful says it was the same when he 

 first tried it, but he soon discovered 



that it required plenty of air, a rich, 

 light soil, plenty of water, and an 

 occasional ducking. This worthy 

 turns a plant upside down with his 

 fingers placed over the soil to keep 

 the ball in the pot, and dipping the 

 head of the plant in water — only 

 water — moves it up and down half a 

 dozen times, and then says, " There, 

 I've made an end of them ; they hate 

 water." If this doesn't answer, he 

 uses water heated to 106 3 , the heat of 

 which kills any that the motion fails 

 to wash off", aud he says, although 

 Slowcoach doubts it, that this is the 

 sovereign remedy for fly. If there 

 are too many plants for a man or boy 

 to manage in a reasonable time, a 

 little damp tobacco placed on a few 

 embers of charcoal in a flower pot 

 will soon scatter all the fly, if done on 

 a warm, bright afternoon, when the 

 plants are all dry ; and a smart syring- 

 ing next morning makes the plants as 

 fresh as if never a plague had been 

 near them. "How often do you do 

 it?" asks the unhappy man. "About 

 twice in the season is enough for me," 

 says the rival. " I don't profess to 

 know thoroughly what is meant by 

 fly, and spider, and mildew. I don't 

 have such things ; plenty of air, 

 plenty of water, good compost, and 

 repotting whenever required, — these 

 are the secrets of prevention." Such 

 a picture of health as Mr. Successful's 

 houses present ought to make an end 

 of all question as to his truthfulness. 

 He further remarks, that to remove 

 vermin or scale smoking or sulphur- 

 ing is in itself insufficient. He will 

 have it they all come from the roots 

 of the plants, not directly, but indi- 

 rectly: for if the circulation of the sap 

 is not kept up vigorously, the fly ap- 

 pears instanter, as if it watched to 

 catch a poor gardener, and punish 

 him for every neglect. But if sul- 

 phuring and smoking are necessary, 

 it must be done systematically. He 

 never puts sulphur on the flues ; he 

 simply closes the house, throws a 

 peck of unslacked lime into a tub, 

 pours on it four gallons of water, and 

 then sprinkles over it an ounce of sul- 

 phur vivum, and leaves it till the 

 morning. In this way, he says, the 

 sulphur cannot burn. Next morning 



