218 PRACTICAL GARDENING. 



moths. If one is seen, catcli and destroy it at any cost. It 

 would be worth while for a gardener to pay a boy to go round 

 the premises with a regular fly net, with orders to catch and 

 destroy an}i:hing that he could get hold o:^ in the way of 

 wasps, butterflies, or moths, and this at the earliest season, as 

 soon as a white butterfly can be seen on the wing. It is also 

 well worth while to get an intelligent young lad, who could 

 be depended on, to gather up the numerous chrysahses from 

 the wall fruit-trees, gooseberry and currant bushes, walls, and 

 other places of refuge during the winter months, when there 

 are no leaves to intercept a perfect examination, and when, 

 with a quick eye, a lad might almost ensure the taking of 

 every one. Those chrysahses would become so many flies or 

 moths, whose whole business would be to fly about awhile, to 

 lay eggs upon the trees most appropriate for fostering the 

 young grubs, ready for their work of destruction. AYe may 

 easily conclude, that the extermination of these chrysalises is 

 of the greatest consequence ; but this will not prevent those 

 from other places coming into your own garden, and there de- 

 positing eggs, leaving you, as it were, a legacy of maggots ; and 

 therefore it is necessary to use the fly-nets, and catch every 

 one that comes. Maggots cannot travel far, and if the parent 

 cannot find a resting place, but is caught or hunted away, 

 you escape all the grubs that she might otherwise have left 

 behind. 



Wasps are very destructive among fruit ; they must be 

 caught and killed ; and be it remembered, that the time for 

 this is at the beginning of the spring, when every one represents 

 almost a swarm. T\Tien they over-aboimd, it is almost endless 

 work to catch and kill. Bottles of inviting poison may await 

 them at every place, but however many may turn aside and 

 sip their last sip, the fruit is so much more attractive, that 

 most of them will "pass the bottle" without doing honour 

 to it, and feast upon the next grape, or peach, or plum that 

 offers itself. So common is it to " shut the stable door after 

 the horse has gone," that we ought not to wonder, perhaps, at 

 being told by the teachers of gardening, that when the fruit 

 begins to ripen, we should hang phials of sugar and water, or 

 some other tempting draught, to draw off the attention of 

 wasps, and to catch them. How much more sensible the 

 advice would be to pro\dde these traps when they would enjoy 

 the monopoly of temptation, when in fact every wasp that 



