Ix PESTS 181 
At such a time—the first appearance—the time 
for checking a pest—I quite believe that, as in the 
case of aphides, there is nothing to beat the human 
finger and thumb. With them take a pinch of 
sulphur, and gently rub the affected part on both 
sides of the leaf. Sulphur is death to all fungoid 
life, but is rendered more efficacious if the mycelium 
is thus broken and wounded: just as there would be 
much difference between poison merely sprinkled on 
the human skin or rubbed into an open wound. 
When the pest is advanced and whole plants 
covered with readily disturbed fresh spores have to 
be dealt with, one of the now advertised remedies, 
applied by spraying-pump or syringe, so adjusted as 
to reach the under as well as the upper sides of the 
foliage, must be employed. For the plant, so to speak, 
of the mildew very soon springs from the spawn, and 
fresh spores are ready in a wonderfully short time 
to be borne by the wind to other leaves. 
On touching a shoot infected with mildew on the 
roof of a greenhouse or anywhere where there is 
plenty of light underneath, quite a little shower of 
dust or mildew seed may be seen to fall. Nothing 
need be feared from those that fall to the ground: 
they are very short-lived, and cannot stand much of 
heat or cold, dryness or moisture. Their strength is 
in their appalling numbers, and their chances of 
falling on another Rose leaf depend entirely upon 
currents of air. 
With the first touch of cold weather in Autumn, 
mildew, as we know it in its summer form, dis- 
appears and is seen no more that season, only dark 
unhealthy-looking marks on the shoots showing 
where the pest had spread from the leaves to the 
