PESTS OF THE GARDEN. 13^ 



in a systematic and efficient manner, by which ho will have his knowledge 

 always available, as in a carefully labelled store-house ; or in an erratic rule-of- 

 thumb manner, where he will have to look up his knowledge when it is most 

 required, and feel himself involved in a maze of doubt when any new pheno- 

 menon presents itself for the first time. 



319. As all insects are produced from eggs, and as the maternal instincts 

 enable the mother to i^lace the eggs in a spot where they will not only be 

 safe, but where the young grub will find food to support itself until its first 

 transformation takes place, a knowledge of the habits of the more destructive 

 species is absolutely necessary to the gardener ; the most effective remedy 

 being to destroy the egg ; for the caterpillar or larva state is that most destruc- 

 tive to vegetation. In this state the name of caterpillar is applicable to 

 Lepidopterous insects or moths, and butterflies, and some of the Hymenoptera, 

 or bees. Grubs are the larva; of beetles, generally with three pair of feet, 

 strong jaws, and fat mis-shapen bodies ; maggots are the lai'va; of flies, moving- 

 along the ground by the muscular action of the rings of the body; the Iarvs9 

 of bees and ants being also generally called maggots. 



320. When the larvse of these several creatures have exhausted the food 

 near which the provident care of the mother has placed them, they are gene* 

 rally prepared for their second transformation, ^the pupa or chrysalis state : 

 winding themselves in their cocoons, they bury themselves in the earth, or in 

 some other obscure place, and emerge in a few hours in forms as various as 

 were their larvse, the beetles with rudimentary feet, which are developed in 

 their perfect state ; the butterfly naked, suspended by the tail, or attached to 

 the branch of some tree or wall ; the moths enveloped in a bag or cocoon, 

 which they have spun round themselves, as in a shroud ; the flies and twc- 

 winged insects, smooth oval substances, are fixed to the plants or trees which 

 have suppoi-ted the larvje. At length their last metamorphosis occurs : the 

 caterpillar becomes a moth or butterfly, gaily painted in its gai-b of sumniLr ; 

 the grub becomes a beetle, with its diaphonous-coloured, hard, shining she'.l ; 

 the maggots develop themselves in thousands of shapes, floating and hum- 

 ming in the air, — the two-winged insects, or diptera. 



321. All the mischief, however, has been done, so far as the garden is con- 

 cerned, and the gardener has only to look forward, as he ever must, to iho 

 next season. The insect life humming and buzzing around him is shortlived : 

 one object of their creation has been attained; they hare performed, so Ci r, 

 their office of scavengers ; their next is, to perpetuate their species ; and tl o 

 object of the gardener must be to circumvent them there, by destroying their 

 eggs as they are deposited. 



32'2. Rose Insects. — There is no class of flowers so much exposed to the 

 depredations of insects as the rose, and no remedy can be applied to their 

 depredations without a precise knowledge of their habits and different states 

 of transition. St. Pierre, when he had studied the economy of the different 

 insects which infest the rosetree for thirty years, still found something 

 new to note. Moths, beetles, and gall-flies, and other insects hardly known 



