384 A Practical Hand Book 



destroyed by dropping them into kerosene. As the beetles are 

 most active during the warm part of the day, this treatment 

 should be used early in the morning or toward night, when they 

 are less inclined to fly. Where it is possible to enclose the buds in 

 paper bags, this will give protection from the beetles, but this is 

 not always practicable. 



The Red Spider. 



This animal, which is not really an insect but a mite, is fre- 

 quently found on the leaves of roses as well as other plants. It is 

 not larger than a pin head, yellowish or reddish in color, and sucks 

 the vitality from the plant, causing the leaves gradually to turn 

 pale and become stunted, and in time the plant dies, unless treat- 

 ment is applied. These pests are particularly sensitive to 

 sulphur, however, and flowers of sulphur dusted over the plant, 

 as much as possible placed on the under side of the leaves, or 

 mixed with water at the rate of an ounce of the sulphur to a 

 gallon of water, and sprayed onto the plants, is usually a fairly 

 satisfactory treatment. In some cases the use of soapsuds in- 

 stead of the water to add the sulphur to, seems to be more 

 efficacious. 



The Spruce Gall Louse. 



Soft, fleshy green galls often noticed in June and July at the 

 bases of the twigs of different kinds of spruces, are the work of 

 gall-making plant lice. The lice feed in chambers in the galls, 

 which are often an inch long and half as wide, during the months 

 named, but by August the galls crack open outside each cavity 

 and turn brown, thus permitting the lice to escape. During the 

 fall and winter these lice, in one stage or another, may be found on 

 the tree, and the following spring eggs are laid, from which the gall 

 inhabiting insects are produced. 



The formation of a gall at the base of a twig nearly always 

 causes the death of that twig, and a tree where the insects are 

 abundant becomes thin, with many dead twigs showing brown 

 galls, and as a whole is by no means the ornament it should be. 



