210 PEACTICAL GARDENING. 



closed lip so that none can escape, and it is as well to do it 

 m the evening, that it may be closed all night. You will 

 see the dead flies by wholesale lying on the pots, or hanging 

 about the leaves, but not a living one among the whole 

 number, however much they abounded before fumigation. 

 For the red spider a damp moist heat and syringing wiU 

 do something ; but it is a good plan to strew sulphur on 

 the flues or hot-water pipes ; the sulphurous vapour that 

 arises settles the account with this pest very quickly ; but 

 plants must be watched for this, because if the leaf actually 

 shows the attack by the colour, they have already sustained 

 considerable damage, and by looking often at the under side 

 of those leaves, which are susceptible of attack, a straggling 

 spider or two may be seen, that would become the founder of 

 a colony not so easily routed. Frequently washing the walls 

 of stoves with hme-white, in which a little flour of brimstone 

 has been mixed, is an excellent thing to prevent the red 

 spider, and if a plant has it very bad, it must be discarded 

 from the house, or all the rest "will become infected. The 

 mealy bug is one of the foulest looking insects that ever got 

 hold of a plant, and so difficult is it to get rid of, that houses 

 once troubled vdih them can hardly be cleared by tiny known 

 means. To clear a plant of it, a good tub-full of tobacco- water 

 should be prepared, strong enough to enable you to taste it, — 

 in fact, about the strength of weak tea. By putting two bars 

 across the top of the tub, and inverting the pot, with its arms 

 resting on the bars, the entire plant will be immersed in the 

 tobacco-water, and in twenty minutes or half an hour the 

 whole will be killed ; but if the plant be too large for this, 

 it must be washed with tobacco-water, and a long hand-brush, 

 li]-e a shaving-brush, and this must be performed very care- 

 f-iLLy or the young shoots will be damaged. Many stove plants 

 are subject to this, and a foul plant put among fifty clean 

 ones, and neglected, will give it to them aU. Whether in a 

 very young state they blow about like so much down, and 

 locate wherever they ahght, or not, we can hardly teU, but 

 they propagate very fast somehow, and if a foul plant be at 

 one end, some of the cleanest at the other end will soon have 

 them. In fact, this and the red spider are formidable plagues 

 in the stoves and forcing-houses, and if neglected, the plants 

 suffer rapidly. The bug will locate on the most tender shoots 

 and bloom buds, and so get among the tender flower-stems, that 



