188 THE BOOK OF THE ROSE CHAP. 
trying first this way, then that, now up and now 
down. 
When the great red shoot pushes up through the 
soil, plump and gross and brittle like a head of 
asparagus, lift it and handle it gently—“ treat him as 
though you loved him,” as Isaac Walton said of the 
worm to be threaded on the hook—try to find out the 
angle at which it grows from the stem, and then, 
erasping it as low down as possible, pull so that the 
strain comes on the very socket, and it will generally 
yield. If it breaks, the spud and knife must complete 
the operation. 
In the anxious month of May, among the 
multitude of pests nothing is worse than a sharp frost, 
which is very harmful, and does more injury by dis- 
tortion of the just-formed buds than is ever imagined 
at the time. Happily, such a visitation as that of 
May 21st, 1894, coming as it did after an unusually 
early and forward spring, is not common, at all events 
in the Midland and Home Counties, and it is to be 
hoped that it will be long before we have such 
another. 
Preventive means are possible, at all events in small 
collections. A little weather knowledge, with a care- 
ful study of the thermometer, will generally give 
warning of the approaching calamity before sunset, 
and if the danger is great all hands should be 
roused and encouraged to noble efforts, even though 
the work must be continued by lamp-light well ito 
the night. 
The first thing to remember is that the greatest 
danger is to those buds that are just formed, hardly 
visible ; forwarder buds that have got hard will stand 
