WHAT CAN WE DO AT CHISWICK ? 



173 



are still, looked upon as the most independent and fairest 

 establishment in the country for testing the merits of horti- 

 cultural productions, and the verdicts passed upon them have 

 undoubtedly been looked upon by the general horticultural 

 public as a fair and unbiassed estimate of their value. It is 

 no doubt quite true that errors have been made, but with all 

 that, the good work done has been invaluable to the horti- 

 culturists of the country, and its cessation would be a severe 

 loss to gardeners, whatever it might be to the introducers of 

 novelties " 



GARDEN INSECTS. 

 By Mr. W. D. Druey, F.R.H.S. 



[Read July 27, 1897.] 



[The illustrations to this paper have been kindly supplied by Mr. Upcot 

 Gill from the new edition of Nicholson's "Dictionary of Gardening."] 



Insects generally play such an important part in the economy 

 of Nature, that it is astonishing how little they are understood 

 by the gardener, be he amateur or professional. This is the 

 more to be regretted since that little learning which is pro- 

 verbially considered dangerous would often mean just the 

 difference between success and failure with his crops. True, of 

 recent years, the advantages of the study of entomology in 

 respect of its bearing upon the garden have been forced upon 

 the cultivator, and the economics of the subject have been 

 placed before him in a manner undreamt of in the philosophy of 

 the old-time gardener. We have, for instance advanced con- 

 siderably since the days when the aid of the parish officials was 

 invoked to clear away the useful little ladybirds. Yet rather 

 more than sixty years ago that was done by a town now so 

 closely identified with horticulture as Eeading. There had been 

 a tremendous influx of these beetles, and it is recorded how the 

 " wiseacres requisitioned the parish engines and private ones to 

 pour upon the useful creatures tobacco-fumigated water, to 

 attack and disperse them." Still, with all the advances made, 

 we are yet a long way behind our American cousins alike as 

 regards the theoretical and the practical side of economic 



