124 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
I am told that in the great cosmogony toads are invaluable 
to the gardener. I wish they had neater habits, and would 
squat on the walks, instead of wallowing out great holes under 
valued possessions. If we must have toads, let them be small 
and trig of figure, young and ever active. I havea hoary old 
grandfather with a spread of six inches from tip to tail, that 
clucks like a hen. 
Another trial is the mouse that gnaws the bark of shrubs, 
girdles young trees, and eats the rootstocks of iris, and nibbles 
young perennials. Sometimes it may be caught in a trap, 
sometimes it is poisoned, but the surest way to protect trees 
and shrubs is to tie about them strips of tarred paper from six 
to ten inches high. If a heavy mulch is applied to the garden 
before the ground freezes, both mice and moles will seek win- 
ter shelter in the mellow soil, which may be prevented by late 
mulching after a hard freeze. 
When the cutworm has been ordinarily numerous, there is 
no respite in the war waged against it, but a new campaign 
begins from the tenth to the fifteenth of June against a small 
tan-colored beetle called the rose-bug. And why rose-bug? 
By courtesy alone should it thus be called. For years it has 
ravaged the panicles of our sumachs, stripping the creamy 
green blossoms down to the bare stems. There is where I 
failed. I should have pursued it long ago; but, as I have only 
recently squandered myself on choice roses, I am just awaken- 
ing to the fact that the rose-bug is a desperate evil. Authori- 
ties agree that hand picking alone conquers. 
Some days before the new roses were in bloom, I discovered 
that a certain fern was suddenly blighted—it was the rose-bug 
at work. As I had never measured the strength and number 
of this foe, I merely began—a stampede; but one can’t do that 
long; so I got a large tin tobacco-box (how useful Adam’s 
manners and customs are to me) and mixing a little kerosene 
