154 



THE BOOK OF THE ROSE 



CHAP. 



brown beetles with long noses. I used to find the 

 employment of a pretty strong pair of tweezers com- 

 forting to my feelings after many buds had been 

 destroyed, but they will drop to the ground at a slight 

 alarm and be most difficult to find. A white cloth 

 spread under the Rose tree to catch them when they 

 fall is a safe precaution. 



Other weevils (Phyllohius), of the most brilliant 

 green colour, may be found on the Rose shoots in the 

 day time. The injury they inflict is but slight, but 

 they should be destroyed, as they form a nuisance when 

 present in large numbers. 



Thrips, well known as a pest on many plants under 

 glass, are often very destructive in hot seasons on dry 

 soil. These active, tiny, black insects cannot eat much 

 it is true, but as what they do eat is the petals of the 

 Roses themselves they often just suffice to spoil an 

 otherwise perfect bloom. In many places they seem to 

 be hardly known as an out-door pest; and I could 

 scarcely get some friends to believe how much all my 

 light-coloured Roses suffered in this way in rusty and 

 disfigured petals till the year 1893, when owing to the 

 drought the nuisance was more widely felt. 



I am seriously inclined to think that for Teas, at all 

 events in my garden, thrips are the worst of all pests. 

 From two good rows of standard Teas in fine health 

 and growth I gathered in 1893 but one decent bloom, 

 the petals being terribly discoloured and even distorted 

 in every other case, and each flower swarming with the 

 enemy. 



The remedy for thrips as for red spider is moisture ; 

 but unfortunately for Tea Roses the remedy is as bad as 

 the disease. It is probably a good plan to syringe the 

 plants, and the buds before they actually begin to 



