CHAPTER XXVIII. 



DISEASES AND INSECT ENEMIES OF SMALL FRUITS. 



'M'ATURE is very impartial. It is evidently her inten- 

 ^ ^ tion that we shall enjoy all the fruits for which we are 

 willing to pay her price, in work, care, or skill ; but she 

 seems equally bent on supplying the hateful white grub with 

 strawberry roots, and currant worms with succulent foliage. 

 Indeed, it might even appear that she had a leaning toward 

 her small children, no matter how pestiferous they are. 

 At any rate, under the present order of things, lordly man 

 is often their servant, and they reap the reward of his 

 labors. 



Did not Nature stumble a little when man fell? She 

 manages to keep on the right side of the poets and painters ; 

 for it would seem that they see her only when in moods 

 that are smiling, serious, or grand. The scientist, too, she 

 beguiles, by showing under the microscope how exquisitely 

 she has fashioned some little embodiment of evil that may 

 be the terror of a province, or the scourge of a continent. 

 While the learned man is explaining how wonderfully its 

 minute organs are formed, for mastication, assimilation, pro- 

 creation, etc., practical people, who have their bread to earn, 

 are impatiently wishing that the whole genus was under their 

 heels, confident that the organs would become still more 

 minute. 



The horticulturist should be cast in heroic mold, for he 

 not only must bear his part in the fight with moral wrong, 



