Mine Enemies 125 



with water, I entered the detective service. Many times a day 

 I went out, and found the garden heliotrope and Spirea sal- 

 icifolia swarming; also the beetles were strolling up and down 

 the stems of the Asperula hexaphylla, and gnawing great bites 

 out of the Chrysanthemum maximum. They do not attack 

 the half wild red Lancaster and cinnamon roses, and I thought 

 I had cleared the garden of them before the choicer roses 

 appeared, when I discovered new relays on the goutweed, 

 mallow, meadow-rue, and hundreds of them on a Virginia 

 creeper. Not that the rose-bug likes Virginia creeper; but, 

 as an enemy, he finds a vine over my favorite seat a vulnerable 

 point to attack. Everywhere save in the heart of roses, where 

 we are bidden to search for the evil one, do we find it. Rose- 

 bug, forsooth ! It is no such dainty epicure as that; it should be 

 called Omnivorous Bug, for it samples everything, even your- 

 self if you stay any length of time. But you don't, for another 

 pestiferous creature drives you frantic and you escape in- 

 doors. I do not know its name, but it looks like a triangular 

 fly with a small head and broad spreading transparent wings 

 with dark spots, and it circles around your head and lights on 

 your arm or back and bites as no gentle rose-bug ever thought 

 of biting. There is something malignant about this noisy fly, 

 and it is seldom that you can get a full view of it. I have had 

 them pursue me over a hundred feet and even fly in at the 

 screen door after me. 



To return to the rose-bug: it flourishes a month or more, 

 when the males die and the females descend into the earth to 

 lay their eggs, come to the surface and die. The eggs hatch 

 in twenty days, and the young larvae begin to feed upon tender 

 roots. In October they descend below the reach of frost 

 where they remain until spring, gradually come to the sur- 

 face, and in May are transformed into pupae and in June be- 

 come beetles. Two remedies besides hand-picking into kero- 



