A GARDEN IN VENICE 



The birds in the garden are few. Birds go so 

 well with polenta, that in spite of all one can say 

 they are probably killed in the garden, and are 

 certainly shot all round it. We have a few 

 blackbirds, sometimes a cuckoo, and a nightingale 

 yearly pays us a spring visit. But after three 

 days he goes to join his mates on the Lido, 

 S. Erasmo, and less inhabitated islands, where he 

 is heard in happy numbers. It is a twofold pity, 

 for the want of birds is our loss of pleasure and 

 the insects' opportunity. With grubs and cater- 

 pillars we are therefore sadly pestered. 



The grapes have their own devourer. A 

 mother moth lays her eggs in the berry and 

 worse in the stalk. The grub eats its way inside 

 the stalk and causes rot, if let alone, to all the 

 grapes below it. 



Roses, too, have a similar enemy. A black 

 and orange fly, the shape of and a quarter the 

 size of a daddy-long-legs, flits in early spring 

 from cluster to cluster of the tender rose shoots 

 and leaves an egg in each. This egg in a day 

 or two hatches out a small maggot, which eats 



R 129 



