132 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
TI do not know the cause, but think it must be due to a sour 
condition of soil kept too shaded and moist. They are 
planted all over the garden, and in sunny locations the plants 
are healthy; elsewhere they are not. I mean to try a little lime 
in the earth as a remedy. 
The cause of the auratum lily disappearing is said to be a 
white mite that infests the scales. In foreign countries where 
they are raised, the conditions are such that this is kept in 
check, while it flourishes in America. A well drained sunny 
situation, a rich soil with plenty of leaf mold in it, but no 
fresh manure, the bulb well insulated by a handful of sand 
directly about it when planted, give the auratum at least a 
favorable environment. 
The Lilium Candidum is also subject to disease, and, as a 
corrective, the bulbs should be powdered with sulphur before 
planting. There are other specific diseases too numerous to 
mention; apparently they are the appointed way that plants 
pass out of this world, like the aster blight, due to the blue 
aphis that attacks the tender roots, for which the specific is 
wood ashes in the soil at the root; the carnation blight due to 
a little worm that finds lodgment in the stem and has to be 
burrowed out. Then there are plants that root near the sur- 
face of the ground, and while they die if kept too wet, they 
are also killed if the roots dry out or the hot sun strikes the 
collar of the plant. 
Many of these peculiar requirements and conditions I have 
tried to enumerate under their proper heads in the Appendix; 
yet the treatment of plants can no more be generalized than 
the treatment of children can. There are inherent capacities 
and aptitudes that seem to demand certain environment, yet 
at times plants adapt themselves in a marvelous way to quite 
contrary ones. Evidently the great life energy is reaching out 
as eagerly to produce ever higher’types through plant forms 
