96 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



blood of plants; their organisms are minature sugar refineries, con- 

 verting great quantities of elaborated life sustaining elements in 

 the vital sap into what is called "honey dew" on which termites, 

 or ants, greedily subsist. Like the fabled filthy Harpies, sent by 

 Juno to destroy the tables of Pheneas, the lances of these green- 

 coated -myrids are tipped with poison, and a train of devastating 

 evils follow in their wake. They deposite a virus in the plasm of 

 the leaf fatal to life, and the cells collapse and die. They open 

 lesions on stems and leaves in which the leprosy of Rust germi- 

 nates its spores. 



Professor Woods has been unable to inoculate a healthy 

 carnation leaf with the Fungi of Rust, the leaf must first have its 

 epidermis lesioned, or perforated by puncturing pests. (The first 

 part of the next chapter makes consecutive reading with this.) 



REMEDY. 



Spraying water with force will knock many Aphides from 

 their lodgments on affected plants, but the older ones soon regain 

 their feeding grounds. The fumes of tobacco are a specific for 

 Greenflies. This is so cheap, effective and easily applied, it is use- 

 less to seek other remedies. The tobacco smoke can only be ap- 

 plied in an enclosure capable of confining the smoke for a time 

 for respiration by the insects. The narcotic principle in tobacco, 

 so poisonous to Aphides, is called nicotine. Tobacco stems are 

 chiefly obtained in bales from tobacco factories at little cost, to 

 possess their full Aphides toxin they must be fresh, and should 

 be dampened before being burned in the greenhouses, this causes 

 them to give out a slower, denser and cooler volume of smoke. 

 Every carnation house should be fumigated once a week with 

 tobacco, without any reference to an observable appearance of the 

 Greenfly. A bushel of tobacco stems is sufficient for a large 

 house if used as a preventive. Nicotine is a specific for Aphides, 

 Red Spider and Thrips. Flowers should always be picked before 

 the house is fumigated; they keep better and the odor of tobacco 

 is dissipated before they are ready to be re-picked. 



