188 THE BOOK OF THE ROSE chap. 



trying first this way, then that, now up and now 

 down. 



When the great red shoot pushes up through the 

 soil, plump and gross and brittle like a head of 

 asparagus, lift it and handle it gently — " treat him as 

 though you loved him," as Isaac Walton said of the 

 worm to be threaded on the hook — try to find out the 

 angle at which it grows from the stem, and then, 

 grasping it as low down as possible, pull so that the 

 strain comes on the very socket, and it will generally 

 yield. If it breaks, the spud and knife must complete 

 the operation. 



In the anxious month of May, among the 

 multitude of pests nothing is worse than a sharp frost, 

 which is very harmful, and does more injury by dis- 

 tortion of the just-formed buds than is ever imagined 

 at the time. Happily, such a visitation as that of 

 May 21st, 1894, coming as it did after an unusually 

 early and forward spring, is not common, at all events 

 in the Midland and Home Counties, and it is to be 

 hoped that it will be long before we have such 

 another. 



Preventive means are possible, at all events in small 

 collections. A little weather knowledge, with a care- 

 ful study of the thermometer, will generally give 

 warning of the approaching calamity before sunset, 

 and if the danger is great all hands should be 

 roused and encouraged to noble efforts, even though 

 the work must be continued by lamp-light well into 

 the night. 



The first thing to remember is that the greatest 

 danger is to those buds that are just formed, hardly 

 visible ; forwarder buds that have got hard will stand 



