203 GARDENING FOR PLEASURE. 



most destructive of all insects attacking the Rose while 

 forcing in winter ; for its ravages are so insidious that 

 often the whole Eose house is ruined before it is known, 

 by inexperienced hands, what is the matter. The per- 

 fect iusect somewhat resembles a small cockroach, but is 

 of a grayish brown color. It is not easily observed, as it 

 keeps always under the leaves or close to the stems of the 

 plant, audits presence is usually first noticed by half cir- 

 cular pieces being bitten from the edges of the leaves; but 

 it does comparatively little harm in that way. It is when 

 it deposits its eggs in the soil close to the roots that the 

 danger begins. The eggs in a few weeks hatch out into 

 larvae, which at once attack, and, if in sufficient num- 

 bers, entirely destroy the roots of the Rose. So far there 

 is no known remedy against the Rose Bug, unless it be to 

 carefully search for and destroy the perfect insect on the 

 plant. In our own establishment we have got entirely 

 free from it by persistent care in destroying the insect by 

 picking it fi'om the plants. When the soil has become 

 infested by the larvae or maggots of the Rose Bug, there 

 is no remedy. The plants, soil, and even the benches of 

 the greenhouse had better be taken out and burned if the 

 insect is there in great numbers. Before we understood 

 how to manage it, ou one occasion we threw out and 

 destroyed the plants, soil, and benches in a Rose house 

 three hundred feet long by twenty feet wide. Hundreds 

 of amateurs, and even professional florists, fail in grow- 

 ing Ro3e buds in winter from no other cause than the 

 ravages of this insect. 



Green Fly, or Aphis, is one of the most common, but, 

 fortunately, most easily destroyed, of any insect that in- 

 fests plants, either in-doors or out. In our greenhouses, 

 as already stated, we fumigate twice a week, by burning 

 about half a pound of refuse tobacco stems (made damp) 

 to every five hundred square feet of glass surface ; but in 

 private greenhouses, or on plants in rooms, fumigating is 



