AiigaBt 15, 1867. 1 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTtJRR AND OOTTA'OE O-AUDENER. 



119 



yean, and will repay all tbe attention it may receive. Red spider 

 and tbrips are itii greatest enemies, and require to be guarded 

 against.— W. H. C. 



THE GREEX FLY. 



Dtjiwko certain seasons and under certain circumstancos 

 there is a marvellous development of insect life — ii prodigality 

 of growth over which our garden philosophers might well 

 ponder. Take the common aphis or green fly for instance. It 

 comes into life with the very diiwn of sprin;,', latent in the un- 

 folding of every leaf, and endowed with the power of repro- 

 dacing itself at n fearful rate ; so much so, as not only to 

 spoil the gardener's work, but to take from him the possibility 

 of a return for his labour. Everything appears to be subject 

 to the ravages of these dreadful insects. They moss over every 

 Rose-bud, and do injury to every tender shoot on which they 

 feed. They come by thousands, borne in npon us by the grey 

 east wind, or they wake up from some snug hiding place where 

 they have slept through the winter, wailing only a congeniality 

 of temperature, warmth, or moisture, to burst out into life. 

 Yes, they come by myriads ; like the sands on the seashore or 

 the drops of the ocean, they are beyond all count, all measure- 

 ment. 



They lead a happy, joyous, though silent life ; not over-sensi- 

 tive either, for they nestle close to, and clamber over each 

 other as if they possessed not the feeling of touch ; and they 

 leave all about in their homes, as if for barricades, the self-liko 

 skeletons of their dead past, until, reaching some higher state 

 of existence, they soar away with their beautiful rainbow-hued 

 wings, to form new cities, new colonies of their own, on the 

 shady side of some Lilium's broad leaf, wherever they are sure 

 of quiet and subdued light. 



" I have been a gardener for more than fifty years," said old 

 Nathaniel Webster the other day, " but I never see'd the like of 

 this summer, it beats all. Them green flies are on everything 

 — Cabbages, shoot-ends of Peas, Hawthorn hedges, (iooseberry 

 bushes, Apple trees, and Plum trees. And as for the forest 

 trees, they are covered over thick with them ; all among the 

 underwood swarms, until the woud-cutters are well-nigh 

 choked." 



" Talk about the country," said Sqnire Banbury's cook, " one 

 might just as well live in Leeds or Bradford, and have to get 

 one's Greens from those 'lotraent gardens down by the river 

 side, they swarm over so — they are all aUve. As for the 

 Lettuces, they are no end of trouble. I shake them, and sweep 

 with a hand-brush, and douce them up and down in bucketfuls 

 of water, yet they are not clean. I could not eat one for my 

 life ; and after all my pains they come down uneaten. Master 

 says they have a boiled look ; and the liorse will not drink out 

 of the bucket for days ; and everything is the same. There 

 ought to be a rule for gardeners to send things in clean. Why 

 the Parsil that came for the salmon the day we had our party, 

 made water thick as Yorkshire pudding-batter. And when wo 

 chop up Mint for sauce, no one knows what else ! " 



"Oh ! I wish there was not such a thing in the world as 

 green fly," said little Annie Taylor. " It is such weary work 

 gardening. If I clean my poor flowers one day, they are all 

 beaded over again the next. Hundreds come rushing to the 

 funeral for every one I kill. Uncle Taylor says, ' I must smoke 

 them or wasji them with tobacco water.' But, then, one cannot 

 easily do that with out-door plants, it would be too expensive 

 even if there were no duty on tobacco." 



Of all pests I think the green flies the most troublesome, a 

 perpetual battle do they wage against all toilers in fields, and 

 gardens, and hothouses. Snails and slugs do much mischief 

 some seasons, destroying the early crops ; but then it is chiefly 

 to plants low down on the ground, and a few young ducks wiil 

 lessen their numbers if not entirely destroy them. And if ducks 

 cannot be used for such a purpose, and unfortunately they 

 cannot always, for wo so rotine our tastes and ears that the 

 sight and soimd of ducks in our gardens are objectionable, how- 

 ever much we may enjoy them on our dinner-table ; then tbe 

 snails must be trapped, and caught, and carried away, which 

 they can be very easily, for slugs have a foolish habit of leaving 

 a milky trail on the soil, as if to point out where they are 

 hiding. 



An old garden in tbe country some few years ago was sadly 

 infested with these little mollusks, to the great hunoyance of 

 the master, and tbe still greater annoyance of the gardener, 

 who could get nothing to grow. All the tender vegetables were 



cropped off as soon as they appeared above the soil. Two yonng 

 girls of the family with whom the gardener was a favourite, 

 volunteered to exterminate tbe enemy. Armed with gloves 

 and trowels, for they could not bring their minds to handle 

 the soft sticky things, and tin cans for their deposit, they 

 went out in the dusky twilight for several evenings to pick up 

 the slugs. Search was not necessary, for there they were on 

 every path, and border, and bit of grass. At tbe close of a 

 week's labour they were not very easy to find, a fortnight and 

 the task was given up. The crops grew apace, and the gardener 

 no longer lost his firi^t and second sowings of Peas, Onions, and 

 Lettuce. 



Then, too, there are tbe caterpillars, those most disagreeable 

 garden enemies, coiling themselves up in the youngest leaves, 

 or seeking their way right down into the soft stem of some 

 plant, just where the blossoms should spring from, and so 

 causing destruction at tbe very beginning. But, then, cater- 

 pillars usually give some signs of their coming, some warning, 

 if it be only a curled leaf, or bits of webby substance hanging 

 about, and they, like snails, may bo kept under by patience 

 and industry ; but the green fly comes down upon one in a 

 moment without sign or warning, and when one comes home 

 from a holiday, or rouses oneself up from a compulsory rest, it 

 often is to hud the work of spoliation done, all beauty gone, 

 for the greedy creatures suck out the very life-blood from what 

 they feed u|)on. -A.t times in our great disappointments, and 

 such come to most learners, and it is, perhaps, well that it is 

 so, for the lesson we learn has often a weightier meaning than 

 the lesson we are taught — well, at such times we are templed 

 to think that Nature must have lost her balance in insect life, 

 or that some great disparity must have arisen in the numbers 

 of the preying insect or the preyed upon ; or that the seasons 

 in their changes, their sudden extremes of heat and cold, bring 

 death to one species of insect, while they quicken into life 

 another. 



We wonder if the rinderpest or some other destroying evil 

 has come to those delicate little fly-catchers that used to dart 

 up and down among the trees through all the long summer 

 afternoons, doing good service for us while we rested from the 

 heat. Or that the ladybirds have forsaken our garden for some 

 more favoured retreat, or that some unknown enemies have fed 

 too largely upon her larvie, owing to a famine in their Egypt, 

 so as to make few and far between the visits of those ever- 

 welcome little Coccinell.T. 



From some cause or other the aphides have this year spoiled 

 our gardens to a great extent. It is hopeless to attempt un- 

 doing the mischief they have done. Many a yoimg girl has 

 thrown down her tools in disgust, and bitter words have been 

 uttered against the seeming uselessness of the poor green fly. 

 And yet after all, as our good vicar says, it may be but another 

 reading of the ancient sentence, " By the sweat ef thy brow 

 shall thou eat bread." And no class of men know belter than 

 gardeners the truth of this ; they need no microscope to read 

 it ; for them it is written in large letters all over, on grass, and 

 hedges, and trees, and flowers, and fruit. And as the artist 

 looking on a picture sees lines, and touches, and thoughts, and 

 feelings the uninitiated cannot see, so the gardener, looking on 

 a bunch of flowers, or a dish of drapes, or a splendid Pine 

 Apple, sees fine pencillings, proportions of form, and tokens 

 of labour and thought which those who have never grown such 

 things are blind to ; and if he be a wise man he will find the 

 curse against toil, spoken so long ago, in his vocation, at least, 

 turning itself into a perpetual blessing. — Macd. 



ORCHAKD-HOU.SKS. 



Mn. Breh.vut (page 73). while recommending spiral cordons, 

 says that a group of five of them takes up only tbe room of one 

 standard, and that you may have " varieties ripening from July 

 to October, instead of ripening all at once." 



Now, I purpose making a few observations on these last 

 words, as they seem to me to have an important bearing on 

 orchard-house culture. I would lay down the proposition that 

 all fruit trees require a considerable amotuit of moisture both 

 in the air and at their roots until they begin to ripen, after 

 which time tho less moisture the better. It is tbe carrying out 

 of this maxim that I have always found tbe great and difficult 

 problem in orchard-house culture. Were a bouse tilled with a 

 single variety of a single fruit the requisite amount of moisture 

 could be given at tbe proper time. But as our bouses are filled 

 with all sorts of plants, some of which are ripening and require 



