GENERAL DISCUSSION ON FLOWERS. 73 



ered fully as efficient as many of the higher cost remedies. It 

 would kill two-thirds of all the insect pests of flowers if used in 

 season. 



Edward O. Orpet spoke favorably of the use of soap as an in- 

 secticide and especially of ivory soap which he said owed its 

 peculiar value for this purpose to the fact that it w^as made of 

 vegetable oils rather than of animal fat, and that it contained no 

 free alkali. He gave as a formula for its use : one cake to six 

 pails of water. He knew of numerous species of insects that 

 this solution would kill. 



Mr. Orpet said he thought that the best results could be ob- 

 tained in the garden with bulbs and annuals, and that wonderful 

 progress had been made in recent years in the development of 

 desirable annuals. He mentioned especially the asters, Salpiglos- 

 sis, Schizanthus, and the Nicotiana Sanderae, a recent, valuable 

 acquisition. 



T. D. Hatfield spoke of planting rhododendrons in gravelly 

 soil, which he managed to fit for these shrubs by putting in an 

 abundance of leaf mold. 



Mr. Manning said that with rhododendrons it was not so much 

 a question of soil as it was of exposures ; they should be planted 

 in partial shade and protected by wind-breaks. Forty per cent 

 of rhododendrons die from lack of proper conditions, and alter- 

 nate freezing and thawing cause more destruction than anything 

 else, 



Mr. Hixon reiterated a warning not to plant rhododendrons in 

 a gravelly soil. 



Mr. Orpet said that gravelly ground was an unsuitable location 

 for rhododendrons, and also if there was lime in the soil they 

 could not be grown. Ericaceous plants generally could not be 

 grown in soil impregnated with lime, which accounted for the 

 fact of the laurel and arbutus being so abundant in some places 

 and not to be found in other localities. 



Thaddeus Friend said he was an amateur and had come into 

 the possession of a tract of barren land at Cape Ann, Massachu- 

 setts, which he desired to cover with trees, shrubs and flowers at 

 a small expense. The first thing he did Avas to get rid of the 

 stones abundantly distributed over the surface. This he accom- 

 plished by planning a macadamized road through the land, and 



