THE AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 
79 
preventives of club, and indeed smart cultivation is death to 
vermin of all kinds, for if the spade, the fork, and the manure 
do them no direct harm, the frequent stirring of the earth 
exposes them to the keen eyes of the thrushes, and robins, and 
nightingales, and thus “ their ranks are thinned by wasteful 
war.” To operate against caterpillars, the first thing is to 
search for patches of eggs on the undersides of leaves, and 
destroy them ; the next thing is to catch and kill cater- 
pillars. A dusting with tobacco powder will settle them 
wholesale, and so will watering the plants with very weak salt 
and water. We must confess we do not trouble ourselves 
much about vermin, for life seems to be too short for such 
small things to interfere with our happiness. We mentally 
ignore their existence, and they probably sicken through loss 
of importance, for we so rarely suffer by their depredations, 
that we know of no better way than to persuade oneself that 
such things exist only in morbid imaginations 
HIBB£lil)'s TRIANGULAR EDGING TILE. 
