6 AN ISLAND GARDEN 



innocent, uplifting, unfailing. Given a little patch 

 of ground, with time to take care of it, with tools 

 to work it and seeds to plant in it, he has all he 

 needs, and Nature with her dews and suns and 

 showers and sweet airs gives him her aid. But 

 he soon learns that it is not only liberty of which 

 eternal vigilance is the price ; the saying applies 

 quite as truly to the culture of flowers, for the 

 name of their enemies is legion, and they must 

 be fought early and late, day and night, without 

 cessation. The cutworm, the wire-worm, the 

 pansy-worm, the thrip, the rose-beetle, the aphis, 

 the mildew, and many more, but worst of all the 

 loathsome slug, a slimy, shapeless creature that 

 devours every fair and exquisite thing in the gar- 

 den, the flower lover must seek all these with 

 unflagging energy, and if possible exterminate 

 the whole. So only may he and his precious 

 flowers purchase peace. Manifold are the means 

 of destruction to be employed, for almost every 

 pest requires a different poison. On a closet 

 shelf which I keep especially for them are rows 

 of tin pepper-boxes, each containing a deadly 

 powder, all carefully labeled. For the thrip that 

 eats out the leaves of the Rosebush till they are 

 nothing but fibrous skeletons of woody lace, there 

 is hellebore, to be shaken on the under side of all 

 the leaves, mark you, the under side, and think of 

 the difficulties involved in the process of so treat- 

 ing hundreds of leaves! For the blue or gray 

 mildew and the orange mildew another box holds 

 powdered sulphur, this is more easily applied, 

 shaken over the tops of the bushes, but all the 



