116 GARDENING FOR PLEASURE. 



keep the plants alive, but since we have had the sparrows 

 in snch numbers, hardly one of these pests is now seen. 

 An examination of the crop of a sparrow killed in July, 

 showed that it contained Eose slugs, Aphis, or green-fly, 

 and the seeds of chickweed and other plants, proving 

 beyond question the fact that they are promiscuous feed- 

 ers. The Eose slug, (Selandria TOSCB), referred to above, 

 is a light green, soft insect, varying from 1 \ 19 of an inch 

 to nearly an inch in length. There are apparently two 

 species or varieties, one of which eats only the cuticle of 

 the lower side of the leaf, the other eats it entire. The 

 first is by far the most destructive here. In a few days 

 after the plants are attacked they appear as if they had 

 been burned. An excellent application for the prevention 

 of the ravages of the Eose slug is whale-oil soap dissolved 

 in the proportion of one Ib. to eight gallons of water, this, 

 if steadily applied daily for a week with a syringe on Eose 

 plants, before the leaf has developed in spring, will en- 

 tirely prevent the attacks of the insect. But we find 

 that if the slug once gets fairly at work, this remedy is 

 powerless unless used so strong as to injure the leaves. 



The Eose-Bug, (Macrodactylus sulspinosus), or Eose 

 Chaffer, gets its name from the preference it shows for 

 the buds and blossoms of the Eose, though it is equally 

 destructive to the Dahlia, Aster, Balsam, and many 

 other flowers, and especially grape blossoms. All the or- 

 dinary remedies seem to fail with the Eose-bug, and it 

 can only be stopped by picking it off by hand. 



Green-Fly, or Aphis, is one of the most common, but 

 fortunately most easily destroyed, of any insect that in- 

 fests plants, either in-doors or out. In our greenhouses, as 

 already stated, we fumigate twice a week, by burning 

 about half a pound of refuse tobacco stems, (made 

 damp), to every 500 square feet of glass surface, but in 

 private greenhouses or on plants in rooms, fumigating is 

 often impracticable. Then the tobacco stems can be 



