INSECTS' EGGS. 



270 



INSECTS ON ROSES. 



their perfect state ; the butterflies naked, 

 suspended by the tail, or attached to the 

 branch of some tree or wall ; the moths 

 enveloped in a bag or cocoon, which they 

 have spun round themselves, as in a 

 shroud ; the flies and two- winged insects, 

 smooth oval substances, are fixed to the 

 plants or trees which have supported the 

 larvae. At length their last metamorphosis 

 occurs : the caterpillar becomes a moth or 

 butterfly, gaily painted in its garb of 

 summer ; the grub becomes a beetle, with 

 its diaphonous-coloured, hard, shining 

 shell ; the maggots develop themselves in 

 thousands of shapes, floating and humming 

 in the air, the two-winged insects, or 

 Diptera. 



All the mischief, however, has been 

 done, so far as the garden is concerned, 

 and the gardener has only to look forward, 

 as he ever must, to the next season. The 

 insects humming and buzzing around him 

 are short-lived : one object of their creation 

 has been obtained ; they have performed, 

 so far, their office of scavengers ; their 

 next is to perpetuate their species ; and 

 the object of the gardener must be to cir- 

 cumvent them here, by destroying their 

 eggs as they are deposited. 



Insects' Eggs, Dressing to Des- 

 troy. 



An excellent dressing to destroy the 

 eggs, &c., of insects that infest the bark of 

 trees and old walls is made in the following 

 manner. Take ^ Ib. of tobacco, Ib. of 

 sulphur, | peck of lime ; stir these ingre- 

 dients well together in three or four gallons 

 of water ; leave them to settle, and syringe 

 the trees and walls well with the clear 

 liquid. More water may be added when 

 the first is used up. 



Insects on Roses. 



There are no class of flowers so much 

 exposed to the depredations of insects as 



roses, and no remedy can be applied to 

 their depredations without a precise know- 

 ledge of their habits and different states of 

 transition. The rose bedeguar or ex- 

 crescence found very frequently on the 

 wild rose, shown in the accompanying 

 illustration, is the work of a gall-fly known 

 as Rhodites ros<z. The ravages of the 

 Aphis rosce, or green fly, on the tender 

 shoots of the rose are well known to all. 

 Anisophia horticola is a beetle which infests 



ROSE BEDEGUAR. AN EXCRESCENCE. 



the flowers of the rose about June, but its 

 maggots do not prey on the plant. Moths, 

 beetles, and gall-flies, and other insects 

 hardly known to the initiated, seem to 

 unite their forces in order to attack the 

 queen of flowers. During June and July, 

 the golden rose-beetle (Cetonia aurata) 

 may be seen wheeling round the rose-tree, 

 with its low hum, its wing-cases and elytra 

 erect, instead of being extended from the 

 body. It feeds upon pollen and honey, 

 and in doing so bites off the anthers of the 

 flowers, while its larvae feed upon decaying 

 wood and vegetable matter, burying 



