PESTS AND DISEASES. 
95 
Remedies. — Immersing the pot and roots in lime water, as 
advised for worms ; watering the soil with a solution of nitrate 
of soda, at the rate of an ounce per gallon, or with a weak 
solution of permanganate of potash and water, will destroy 
these creatures. 
Thrips. — There are few insects more destructive than 
these. The one which attacks the chrysanthemum and other 
greenhouse plants is T. adonidum, a dark brown four-winged 
insect, with a reddish tipped body, pale yellow eyes and limbs, 
and measuring 1-20 in. in length. It is wonderfully agile in its 
habits, jumping away directly the leaf it is on is touched. The 
larvse, small, whitish or yellowish maggots, are also fairly active, 
but they cannot jump. Both feed on the surfaces of the leaves 
and shoots, sucking out the juices and causing them to assume 
a yellowish tinge and die. Not only do they injure the leaves, 
but also the young shoots and flowers. They are especially 
destructive to the young and tender foliage of orchids and 
vines. As a rule, they never get very numerous in greenhouses 
that have a fairly moist atmosphere. 
Remedies. — Sponging the foliage, or syringing or spraying 
with a solution of one of the advertised insecticides, are the 
usual remedies. Fumigation with tobacco on three successive 
evenings generally proves successful. 
Wireworms. — Although these rarely do any serious 
harm to the chrysanthemum, still, in case they should, it will be 
as well to give a description of them in order that they may be 
distinguished from millepedes. The wireworm is the larva of 
a greyish-brown beetle known as the Skip Jack or Click Beetle 
(Agriotes obscurus). The beetles deposit their eggs on the 
herbage or roots of plants, and these in due course hatch into 
slightly flattened cylindrical grubs of a yellowish hue. Each of 
these grubs is furnished with three pairs of short legs, situate 
just behind the head, with a sucker-like foot below the tail. 
Their bodies are exceedingly tough and wire-like, hence their 
name ; in fact, so rigid that they may be readily snapped 
through the middle. The first step of the larvae is to eat its 
way into the heart or stem of the plant, and work upwards 
until it reaches the surface. It then quits this plant for another, 
beginning at the roots as before. Wireworms are voracious 
