THE JOYOUS ART OF GARDENING 



Inexpensive Gabdenees' Assistants 



Do not neglect to secure all the allies you can to police 

 your borders. The time of the "hired-man" is expensive, his 

 methods cumbersome compared to the deft work of those 

 humbler garden-assistants with whom the despatching of in- 

 sects has for countless generations been a specialty and a 

 means of livelihood. Don't kill the harmless garter-snake 

 that sHps across your path — ^he is on no errand of mischief, 

 but one of beneficence. If Eve had set the serpent to work 

 at his proper business of killing insects he would have had no 

 leisure for temptation. Encourage the birds, especially the 

 titmice, wrens, orioles, and woodpeckers, but above all invite 

 the presence of toads. If you can get them in no other way, 

 follow the Scriptural injunction and go out into the highways 

 and byways and compel them to come in. Slugs, chinch- 

 bugs, cutworms, all sorts and conditions of caterpillars — even 

 "thorny" ones — all seem alike acceptable to the toad; also 

 he has an astonishing capacity. When one considers that a 

 toad will calmly swallow, one after another, eighty-eight rose- 

 bugs and be ready for more, and that four times a day he fills 

 his stomach, one sees how extremely useful to the gardener 

 is his sturdy digestion, his cathohc and comprehensive ap- 

 petite. In the matter of slugs and cutworms, insects which 

 wait until night before taking their walks abroad, the toad, 

 being a nocturnal animal himself, is peculiarly valuable. 



If my account savors of romance, get from the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, at Washington, Bulletin Number 196 

 and read it. 



Troublesome Insects 



However the biologist may define them, the gardener finds 

 that insects, from the minutest scale to the fattest cutworm, 



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