256 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTUKE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEE. 



[ October 2, 1873. 



trucks in front of the windows in summer, the wire fence iu 

 front and iron rods for the support of net would, of course, be 

 dispensed with, as intercepting the general view from the 

 windows, and, moreover, not be required as for the protection 

 of fruit from birds. — {Extract from Fountaine's New Method 

 of Growing Fruit, dc.) 



EOSE SHOW AT BEIE-COMTE-KOBEBT. 



[The following was accidentally omitted, and as it refers to 

 an important part of the Exhibition W'e insert it : — ] 



I CANNOT conclude my remarks without referring to the very 

 polite manner in which we were received, and also, I would add, 

 that our Royal Hoiticultural Society might very well take a leaf 

 out of their book with regard to the way in which the Judges or 

 Jury were recognised. We do these things better in the large 

 exhibitions in the north of England than the R.H.S. do at their 

 provincial shows : witness the manner in which at the Man- 

 chester Show the Judges were entertained at one of the chief 

 hotels, and every cost defrayed from Tuesday night till Friday 

 morning. Here at Brie-Comte-Bobert, after the Jury had 

 finished their task of going round the different exhibits, they 

 were all invited to assemble at the Hotel de Ville, and in the 

 presence of the Prefect of the Arrondissement the different 

 awards were read out and entered into the Secretaries' book, and 

 any mistakes corrected. The medals and prizes w'ere then placed 

 on the table, for, as I before remarked, no money prizes were 

 given; but medals and objects of art, such as raised ornamental 

 stands for fruit and other table ornaments, were adjudged as 

 prizes, and no awards whatever were made unless the proper 

 standard of merit was reached. The medals, twelve in number, 

 and four other ornamental prizes, were then adjudged to the 

 different exhibitors, but they were not given away till the fol- 

 lowing day at tw'o o'clock, when the ceremony of presentation 

 by the Prefect took place in a tent especially erected for the 

 purpose. 



After the awards had been finally settled a gi-and banquet was 

 held, under the presidency of the Prefect, to which the Jury 

 and principal exhibitors were invited; we were, however, un- 

 willingly obliged to leave in order to return to Paris, so that I 

 cannot give any particulars of the banquet. 



I think the system of summoning the Judges together to have 

 the awards read out and verified might be adopted by ns, and 

 would often save the inconvenience which at times arises from 

 the wrong exhibitor's name being attached to the prize cards. 

 I fear the English are such an eminently money-loving nation, 

 that medals will not readily take the place of ±' s. d. ; but if at 

 every large exhibition medals were awarded as additional prizes 

 for successful culture, or for the introduction of novelties of 

 decided merit, or the hybridisation of plants, &c., and these 

 awards publicly given either at an advertised time in one of the 

 tents, or at an evening soiree or dinner, it would add much to 

 the i'clat of the Exhibition. I have no doubt that at the next 

 provincial show of the Eoyal Horticultural Society, wherever 

 it may be, the comfort of the Judges and exhibitors will be 

 more studied, and better arrangements made, by means of 

 which amateur and professional gardeners may be able to 

 meet together to discuss objects of common interest, and to 

 become mutually acquainted. "With these remarks I will con- 

 clude my notice of the Exposition de Brie-Comte-Eohert. — 

 C. P. Pe.\ch. 



THE BEAUTIFUL AND USEFUL INSECTS OF 

 OUR GARDENS.— No. 10. 

 Two gardeners who were at first engaged in a lively and 

 friendly conversation, came near to quarrelling merely through 

 a verbal misunderstanding. The topic of insect enemies 

 happened to come up, and one of the pair, a Scotchman, 

 waxed eloquent upon the injuries some of his fruit had sus- 

 tained from the " fleas." His English acquaintance was 

 somewhat puzzled. He knew pretty well the leaping insect 

 parasitic on man and animals, called scientifically Pule.v 

 irritans, and popularly the flea, and he had seen and heard 

 of other fleas, such as the Turnip flea, attacking crops, but 

 that there should be fleas upon fruit seemed rather extra- 

 ordinary. And when the narrator went on to say that some 

 of these " fleas " made a very loud humming, almost as loud 

 as bees, the listener became indignant at what he deemed to 

 be an attempt to play off a joke upon him. The mention 

 of wings, however, threw a new light upon the subject, and 

 the EngUshman discovered that there were " fleas " and fleas ; 

 the latter, if more numerous in north than in south Britain, 

 as spiteful tourists say, have no other qualities distinguish- 

 ing them from their brethren. Historically, one might trace 

 out some points of resemblance between flies and fleas, 



though they belong to very different sections of the class of 

 insects according to the older naturalists. More recent au- 

 thors are a little inclined to assert that a flea is really a 

 four-winged fly minus its wings, and having only the four 

 scales remaining to show where the wuigs oug'.it to be, and 

 through lack of the powers of aerial flight, developing a 

 capacity for leaping. 



Not by any means can it be said that flies, speaking of them 

 generally, are to be regarded by the horticulturist with dis- 

 favour. Some there are which occasion him a certain amount 

 of annoyance or positive injury in their larval and imago con- 

 ditions, yet others are of decided utihty, and a large number 

 simply iu the position of neutrality. At this season of the 

 year, glancing over the flower beds still gay with varied colours, 

 we see many flies — not all of them, as we might hastily con- 

 jecture, intent upon honey, but with different objects in view, 

 according to their habits. Hovering over the Asters, or at 

 rest upon them, we may discern specimens of the Helophili or 

 Drone-flies, so called from the indolence, or seeming indolence, 

 of their lives. One who is not entirely an unbeliever in the 

 doctrine of the transmigration of existences from one state to 

 another, calls these flies melancholy-looking, with a sort of 

 sadness about them as if they were doing penance in their fly 

 condition for transgressions committed in some other shape ; 

 but this is all fancy, of course, and they no doubt have to the 

 full all happiness befitting their size and make. A very com- 

 mon species is known as Eristalis, or Helophilus teuax, and 

 receives its specific name from the great resolution with which 

 it grasps any object from which it is unwilling to he removed. 

 But make one of them start from the flower on which it is 

 resting, and it dashes off with a sonorous hum, which, to- 

 gether with something rather bee-like in the insect's outline, 

 leads some persons to suppose that it is a veritable bee. The 

 economy of the larva of this Dipteron is worthy of regard, 

 for there is reason to suppose that, though it is not especially 

 the gardener's friend, by the habits of its life under the water 

 it decomposes much, which, in a hygienic aspect, is decidedly 

 unwholesome, if not dangerous, to mankind. These " rat- 

 tailed maggots," as they are popularly called, form a moiety 

 of the great host of Nature's scavengers. The excessive 

 length of their tails is a notable peculiarity in their appear- 

 ance, and, as the illustrious Eeaumur observed, they have a 

 telescopic action, so that the larvae can lengthen them to 

 reach the surface, if need be, and secure a supply of air ; in 

 the same manner, in fact, as the common larva of the gnat. 

 Having several of these in a shallow vessel, Eeaumur gradu- 

 ally increased the depth of the water, and found that their 

 tails elongated until they were double the leugth they had at 

 first ; and if it were not for this peculiar property they possess, 

 the larvfe would at times be likely to he suffocated in the soft 

 and slimy compounds of mud and decaying animal and vege- 

 table substances which supply them with food. As it is, pro- 

 bably some of them are destroyed by the sudden deepening of 

 the water, should that occur, or its violent agitation. The 

 breathing tube or tail is tufted, so as to exclude water while 

 admitting air. 



The aquatic life of Eristalis tenax is by far the largest part 

 of its existence, and when a larva of this species has attained 

 its full growth it quits the pond oi pool and seeks a home in 

 the " common mother of all," the earth. There, buried for 

 awhile in the pupal condition, it is motionless and foodless, 

 coming forth ultimately in the summer or autumn again to 

 feed upon ambrosia instead of putrescence. It had been sus- 

 pected by entomologists for some years that flies of the genera 

 Eristalis, Syrphus, Volucella, and others, eat not only honey, 

 hut also the pollen, and the researches of Dr. E. Miiller have 

 established this beyond a doubt. He observed an individual 

 of E. tenax resting upon an CEuothera ; when stretching its 

 body forward it seized a fragment of pollen, and drawing it 

 nearer to the mouth, removed by means of the fore legs the 

 fine particles of thread by which this bit of pollen had been 

 attached to the mass. Then after subjecting the pollen to a 

 kind of mastication, performed by means of the valves of 

 the proboscis, the fly placed it iu the channel of the lower lip, 

 and it was speedily swallowed and the process repeated. Going 

 thus from flower to flower, and working on the greater part of 

 the day, as Dr. Midler found they did, these flies accumulate 

 in their interior regions a good quantity of pollen, for on 

 making a section of one Dr. Miiller discovered in the stomach 

 a mass consisting of many thousands of pollen grains. Why 

 these flies should devour so much pollen, and whether they 

 digest it all after a time, or, like certain Roman epicures of 



