IX 



PESTS 



167 



do not prove amenable to other treatment. But there 

 is some risk in doing this of cutting or injuring useful 

 roots, and even a small bit of sucker left will often 

 start afresh. 



The best plan, as with all pests, is to take the suckers 

 in time as soon as ever they are seen, and then, not to 

 cut them, but to pull them out. This can be done with 

 practice in most cases, and when done it is thoroughly 

 effectual : the sucker comes clean away right out of the 

 socket, and grows no more. It requires humouring, and 

 testing, and trying first this way then that, now up and 

 now down. 



When the great red shoot pushes up through the 

 soil, plump and gross and brittle like a head of asparagus, 

 lift it and handle it gently — " treat him as though you 

 loved him," as Isaac Walton said of the worm to be 

 threaded on the hook — try to find out the angle at 

 which it grows from the stem, and then, grasping it as 

 low down as possible, pull so that the strain comes on 

 the very socket, and it will generally yield. If it breaks, 

 the spud must complete the operation. 



As I write, the Rose world is lamenting one of the 

 worst of pests — a sharp May frost. These are often 

 very harmful, and do more injury by distortion of the 

 just-formed buds than is ever imagined at the time. 

 Happily, such a visitation as that of May 21st, 1894, 

 coming as it did after an unusually early and forward 

 spring, is not common, at all events in the Midland 

 and Home Counties, and it is to be hoped that it will be 

 long before we have such another. 



Preventive means are possible, at all events in small 

 collections. A little weather knowledge, with a careful 

 study of the thermometer, will generally give warning 

 of the approaching calamity before sunset, and if the 



