CHAPTER XVIII. 



DISEASES OF CARNATIONS CAUSED BY INSECTS— GREENFLY 



{R/iopalosiphum Dian^/it )— RUD SPIDER {Tetranychus 



7>/ar?«jf) -NEMATODE [Heterodera Radicicola)— 



THRIPS— REMEDIES. 



CARNATIONS in the United States are freer from all kinds 

 of diseases than they were five years ago. The epidemic 

 of Rust that occurred in the early nineties threatened the 

 continued cultivation of carnations, and frightened growers into 

 radical precautionary measures to secure the health for their 

 plants, in all the phases of their life, between the cutting bench 

 and the compost pile. There is no disease of carnations the grow- 

 er now need fear, if he starts with healthy cuttings and follows 

 them through their mutations with the best known hygienic con- 

 ditions. 



Growers must abandon the idea that their duties consist in 

 mixing villanous compounds for carnation ailments, and making 

 their greenhouses hospitals for diseased ones, or sanitariums for 

 their recovery. The prophylactic method is the only one on which 

 to grow carnations. The pharmacy must be preventive, not cura- 

 tive; and their nutrients normal and not concocted. It is enough to 

 give carnations vital paresis to carry the ponderous names pro- 

 fessors from experimental stations give to their real and imagi- 

 nary malidies. 



To the common mind the Etiology, Pathology and Thera- 

 puetics of carnation diseases are as nebulous as was Heckel's 

 chaotic ether, out of which he moulded worlds. 



GREENFLY {Rhopalosiphu7n Dianthi.) 

 All the serious troubles which assail carnations arrange them- 

 selves under the heads of i7ised and fungous enemies. Of these 

 the Greenfly is the sapper and miner and leads the enemies, as- 



