28 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 
2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet or so in length, Amateurs will 
sometimes find in April that the younger leaves are chewed 
or eaten off, and the cause is not apparent. Sparrows are 
usually to blame for this, and a good preventive is to stretch 
lines of white or black threads just above the plants. In 
the absence of these threads, sparrows may attack the plants 
whether they are under glass or in the open air, After the 
flower-stems are tied to the sticks, the sparrows do not 
interfere with them. The plants are usually grown out-of- 
doors until the flower-buds are about to show their colour, 
when they must be removed under glass, if flowers of the 
highest quality are desired. 
During the time that they are out-of-doors they are 
liable to be attacked by two insect pests, namely, green fly 
and thrips. The green fly feeds upon the leaves and 
clusters around the flower-buds in their early stages of 
growth. The thrips attack the flower-buds when they are 
fully developed, just as the petals are showing colour. 
The general treatment for insect pests is described on an- 
other page, but I will remark here that the plants should 
be taken into the Carnation house and be fumigated with 
one of the nicotine compounds. The flowers will develop 
rapidly under glass, and, if the flower-buds on a single stem 
have been thinned out to three, these should develop into 
large, handsome flowers. Shading should be employed to 
keep the flowers fresh as long as possible. The flower- 
ing time for border Carnations is from the middle of 
July until the middle of August, and all the Carnation 
exhibitions are held between these two periods. 
