July 22, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



339 



is not the worst of them. Grape-blossoms are their dear de- 

 light, and nothing but the most unremitting attention will save 

 the future bunches from their greedy depredations. There are 

 at least two to every raceme of fragrant blossoms, and by the 

 time one has disposed of that pair another is hying about all 

 ready to take their places. 



Arsenical poisons have no more effect upon them than a 

 cold shoulder on an office-seeker. They may kill the plant, 

 but never the rose-bug, which will crawl undismayed over its 

 ruins, seeking new worlds to conquer. Having no delicate 

 sensibilities, they are undeterred by whale-oil soap, which dis- 

 heartens most things, and even a dusting with hellebore does 

 not even make them sneeze. The great unterrified eat on in 

 spite of all you can do to them, and no sooner is one set slain 

 than you find another in its place. They remind one of the 

 Jesuit monks in Bolivia, whom the inhabitants finally regarded 

 as supernatural beings, because, no matter how often one 

 cowled and sandalled form was laid low, another succeeded it, 

 till the natives came to believe that the friar was an immortal, 

 whom they vainly sought to destroy. 



As to the rose-bug, hand-picking into a bowl of kerosene or 

 hot water, begun at morn, continued till noon, and not inter- 

 mitted till dewy eve, is the safest resource against the ma- 

 rauders, which devour not only Grape-blossoms and Roses, 

 Spiraeas and Syringas, Pasonies and Snowballs, but cover 

 Birches, Oaks, Elms, and even Willows, with their ugly little 

 forms, and leave behind them a lace-work of veins in place of 

 leaves. 



Nothing pleases them better than a Smoke-bush in blossom, 

 the future fringe of which they will completely destroy in a 

 few hours. We tried the experiment this year of tying ours 

 up in mosquito-netting, but it seemed to accomplish nothing 

 better than the excitement of the curiosity of passers-by, who 

 could not make out whether it was a ghost on the lawn or a 

 balloon waiting for a Fourth of July inflation. The indomi- 

 table chafers perched on the outside by the hundred and 

 chewed at the blossoms through the meshes, so that, what 

 with their attacks and the confinement, the smoke came to 

 nothing after all, for when the cover was removed nothing 

 was to be seen of the fringe but a few bare green stems. 



Probably the rose-bugs do not publish a morning paper, or 

 they would learn that the lawn at Overlea is an unhealthy 

 situation for their race, and that their unprecedented mortality 

 in that region ought to be a warning to them. Certainly in the 

 height of the season the hecatomb of victims amounts to a 

 thousand a day, but the cry is, still they come. 



We hoped that the long, cold, easterly storm of June would 

 prove a discouragement to them, but the minute it stopped 

 raining they reappeared more numerous and hearty than 

 ever, and made up nobly for lost lime. They show a curious 

 preference for old-fashioned Roses, and will devour them, 

 leaving a bed of hybrids of modern varieties almost un- 

 touched, and they never are found here on the Tea Roses. 

 They will eat the hardy Hydrangea voraciously, but do not 

 affect the Weigelia. They spoil the Snowballs, but do not 

 meddle with Lilacs. We have some young Canoe Birches 

 that are struggling for existence, and I always imagine the 

 departing caterpillar exchanging compliments with the arriv- 

 ing rose-bug and recommending them to his particular atten- 

 tion, after the fashion of guzzling Jack and gorging Jimmy : 



" Here's little Billee, he's young and tender, 

 They're old and tough, so let's eat he." 



Positively, if, during three or four weeks of their stay, 

 those insects were not fought tooth and nail, there would not 

 be one leaf left upon those unhappy little trees. As it is, when 

 the brutes depart, the Birches look like a design in skeleton 

 leaves. 



This year our hopes were roused by a remedy called Slud- 

 gite, which was warranted to kill, not only the rose-bug, but 

 the Colorado beetle and all other insects fatal to vegetation. 

 Though scoffed at by incredulous friends we dared to send 

 for a can of this evil-smelling mixture and applied it to the 

 creature, with whom it undoubtedly disagrees. It is made of 

 the residue of petroleum and soap, and smells to heaven, but, 

 alas ! the rose-bug has no nose — at least no nose that takes 

 offense at bad odors. Sludgite is a thick, semi-solid sub- 

 stance that mingles readily with water, and is applied by a 

 spraying-pump or a hand syringe, and kills by contact. The 

 rose-bug and the Colorado beetle keel over with all their 

 heels in the air as soon as the gummy fluid comes in con- 

 tact with their wing coverings, but, curiously enough, it seems 

 to have no power to destroy the larva of the potato-bug, and, 

 not being a poison, it seems to have no deterring effect upon 

 the little worm that eats the leaves of Rose-bushes, or even 



upon the Thrip, which whale-oil soap banishes for a long time. 

 Therefore, I judge that the mixture clogs the wings and inter- 

 feres with the breathing of beetles, or, possibly, whatever 

 virtue it possesses lies in the volatile essence which escapes 

 from it, for the fresh mixture is much more deadly than that 

 which has stood for some time. 



But the sad thing about its use is, that the rose-bug is a 

 being that draws no moral from any tale, and he is totally 

 devoid of sentiment. I cannot find that the corpses of his 

 relations take away from his appetite in the least. Possibly 

 the numerous attendants we see at the funeral come for a 

 wake, and they are full as hungry and thirsty as Conn the 

 Shaughraun's cousins on the same melancholy occasion. 



Though I am disposed to think that the chafers may not be 

 quite so ready to attack a bush or tree freshly anointed with 

 the unsavory fluid, I am not sure but that the wish is father to 

 the thought. In any case, it is not practicable to shower a 

 bush every five minutes with anything, however deadly, so 

 that it is almost as discouraging as hand-picking. 



A distinguished horticultural authority, who takes very little 

 stock in my new discoveries, declares that muscle is worth 

 more than faith, and shows me perfect roses, as large as his 

 fist, to prove it. This is all very well if you are lucky enough 

 to have unlimited muscle at your command, as in an arbore- 

 tum for instance, where every rose-bug has a man to catch 

 him, but both hand-picking and insecticides are alike failures 

 in a private family with one factotum. What the world de- 

 mands is a warning of some kind that the chafer who runs 

 may read, a something to convey to his insect-mind or nostrils 

 the information that " no rose-bug need apply," and whoso 

 can make this discovery palpable to the enemy will have his 

 fortune in his red right hand. 



The legends connected with the rose-bug are numerous. 

 They tell us that he will not molest a Grape-vine or a Rose- 

 bush close against a house, though he will devour the Vir- 

 ginia-creeper against the lattice of your veranda. He is 

 supposed to object to the dust of the road and to a sprinkling 

 of coal-ashes ; but on our own windy hill neither of these de- 

 terrents can be made to stick. 



Another legend belongs to the potato-beetle, which some of 

 the farmers in this neighborhood vow will not trouble Potatoes 

 planted in a hill with Beans ; but this is merely a legend. We 

 have tried it, and find the creatures as lively as ever. 



To return to sludgite, I would say that its highest practical use 

 is upon trees and shrubs without blossoms, for the sticky yel- 

 low fluid cannot be sprinkled upon roses without spoiling 

 their fairness. So far it does not seem to damage foliage, but 

 we cannot answer for the effect of such a viscid decoction if 

 used many times a day. We have never tried it more than 

 twice in twenty-four hours. It kills or drives away the insects 

 that are there, but others return immediately, so that such in- 

 secticides are little better than substitutes for hand-picking. 



Our struggles with the hated rose-bug, and the hopeless 

 nature of any prolonged encounter with an inferior organism 

 of overwhelming numbers, find such clear expression in the 

 words of a correspondent that I subjoin an extract from a let- 

 ter from a lady who has had similar sufferings with another 

 insect : 



"I am passing through the discouraging season of garden- 

 ing, and am realizing more than ever the nature of Adam's 

 curse. It sounds like a fine thing to be told we shall have do- 

 minion over the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, but 

 what gain is there in that if we are to be beaten in the end by 

 the angle-worm, the ant and the snail? To fight with a snail, 

 and be beaten, isn't that humiliation ? But I stand in the place 

 of the vanquished, and it is the snail that has done it. I was 

 born a sentimentalist, and had scruples about ' taking away the 

 life thou canst not give,' that once hindered my career as a 

 gardener. Now I grieve over the imperfect nature of the 

 snail's nervous system that makes even death apparently 

 painless. 



"But he keeps up with the times, does the snail ; he reads 

 the seed catalogues, and he knows that Asters cost more than 

 Marigolds ; he has an eye for beauty, too ; he knows a foliage 

 plant very early in its career, and his taste is always for red 

 rather than green. 



" The snail is a much underrated power ; his calmness, his 

 persistence, his retiring nature, his thick-skinned endurance, 

 make him a type that is bound to survive, and I predict for 

 him a glorious future. If he can only find enough fools to cul- 

 tivate gardens for his use he will enter in and possess the land, 

 and develop into something quite grand." All of which quo- 

 tation, with slight variation, will answer for our winged pest. 



I was quite touched by the prediction of a member of the 

 horticultural society of that state, that apparently the whole of 



