DESTRUCTION OF VERMIN. 219 



arrived within the smell would inevitably be tempted to 

 drink ! Why, by the time the fruit was becoming ripe, three- 

 fourths of the depredators would be disposed of The truth 

 is, almost every body waits for the inconvenience, and then 

 tries to get rid of it, instead of using half the trouble to keep 

 the evil off altogether. Bottles of sugar and water, or sugar 

 and beer, with tolerably wide mouths, might with great ad- 

 vantage be hanging about all the year, for while food that is 

 agreeable is scarce, wasps fly a long way in search of it, and 

 this is the time when, by destroying one, we "kill many 

 birds with one stone." We have no notion of waiting for the 

 enemy to do mischief before we try to get rid of him ; we 

 would rather battle with him while we had nothing to lose, 

 and when our traps would be doubly and trebly inviting. 

 Destroying wasps' nests is rather a dangerous sport, but 

 wherever wasps at all abound, good premiums should be offered 

 for their destruction. There would be plenty ready to hunt 

 them out and smother the whole community ; the great danger 

 is in leaving some hole open that communicates with the nest, 

 and that we have not seen. The usual way is to stop all but 

 the principal hole up, and to burn sulphur within that hole, 

 all that come are then burned to death, and all that remain in 

 are smothered. 



We now come to the grubs, and other enemies underground, 

 the wire-worm, cockchafer grub, the bot, centipede, and an 

 endless variety of maggots. The wire-worm may be thinned 

 a good deal by planting old carrots, and drawing them every 

 morning, when these creatures will be found to have eaten 

 their way half into the carrot, and may be pulled out and 

 killed; this will soon clear a place of the wire-worm ; but most 

 of the underground pests are annoyed by a good dressing of 

 wood-ashes ; if this be forked in a few inches into the soil, it 

 drives them away for the time, but if on digging a piece of 

 ground any of these things be seen, it is well to set somebody 

 at once to fork it about and pick them out, and then give the 

 dressing of wood-ashes. 



Birds. — AYith respect to birds, whose destructive "\TOrk at 

 seed-time will often lose the gardener a valuable crop, httle can 

 be done but some constant means of frightening them, or the best 

 of all possible securities, net-work. There is a great variety of 

 cheap netting manufactured now for the purpose of protecting 

 fruit and seeds against birds, and the use of these will be found 



