CARE OF PLANTS IN THE GARDEN 69 
spray must be resorted to. There are many pro- 
prietary insecticides on the market, manufactured 
by quahfied chemists in well-equipped establishments, 
and generally speaking it is safer, just as economical 
and certainly less irksome to procure a ready-made 
insecticide than to attempt to make one's own. 
The great thing is to use the spray as soon as the 
need is discovered, to spray two or three times 
with a fluid at the strength prescribed by the manu- 
facturers rather than try to make short work of 
it by increasing the strength, to see that every 
part of the plant, under the leaves as well as above, 
is sprayed, and to wash away dead insects and 
sediment by spraying with clear water within a 
day or two of the use of insecticide. 
The Treatment of Fungoid Diseases 
Hardy plants are not immune from diseases, some 
subjects being more hable to certain troublesome 
maladies than others. The Hollyhock disease was 
for years so rampant and destructive that many 
of its most ardent devotees gave up cultivation of 
the plant in despair. The fungus appears first on 
the underside of the leaf in the form of brownish 
pustules like little spots of snuff. Very soon the 
plant is smothered with these spots and the plant 
languishes and probably fails to flower. It is too 
late to grapple with the disease when the pustules 
appear because the filaments of the fungus have 
already penetrated the outer surface of the leaf 
