536 JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. r June so. issi. 
of Stonecrop well trimmed in ; in the middle just between 
the windows a very large pot of Alyssum maritimum, a smaller 
one also at each end of the border, which like the three other 
borders is about 2^ feet wide, and a little way in front on the 
gravelled space where never a weed is to be seen two pots of 
Saponaria ocymoides. These five pots are masses mound-shaped 
of white and rose-coloured blossoms, yet exceedingly airy and ele¬ 
gant, the pots being quite outgrown and overgrown on every 
side, and the general effect most attractive. 
The border under the house wall is in spring full of Snowdrops 
now at rest. In the centre of the gravel space is a circular bed 
gorgeous with Crocuses in their season. Now first within the 
neat Box edging comes a planting of dark blue Lobelias, the rest 
filled this year with scarlet Geraniums. The west border, besides 
the little Box edging common to the four borders, has a low- 
growing Privet fencing 22 or 23 inches high. Along the foot of 
this, indeed in all the borders, rows of wild Primroses nestle 
round with sweet-scented wood Violets and wild Hyacinths thickly 
studded between. The east border is bounded by a raised grass 
edging falling gently to the broad way that leads through a gate 
at the side of the garden up to the house and round to the back 
entrance. On each side of this gate grow some tall white Bose 
trees, Nature’s own standards—several bare stems, then dense 
heads of darkest green, the white buds innumerable just bursting 
into bloom. On the right hand, well sheltered from the east, is 
the tiniest triangle not 2 yards either way ; where at the foot of 
these standards are tufts of Primroses, wood Hyacinths, and 
quantities of flowering Lily of the Valley, out of bloom now. 
Once more. Within the garden I have endeavoured to describe 
are to be found half a dozen Fuchsias, white, crimson, double— 
vigorous plants for autumn flowering that have stood the last few 
winters protected only by a covering of ashes. Petunias have 
been raised from seed sown in the open border sheltered from 
frost by a brick or two ; these with rows of Victoria Asters and 
African Marigolds will make the autumn display ; now Pansies, 
double red Catchfly, Mimulus, Feverfew, yellow Persian Boses, 
yellow Stonecrop, and two other plants about whose names I am 
uncertain, with one or two double Pinks to be succeeded soon by 
Clove Carnations, a little dwarf Hybrid Perpetual Bose, cover but 
do not overcrowd the ground of this always healthy and admirably 
managed garden. 
I should say that the possessors are intelligently devoted to 
their garden, finding time amidst home duties late and early to 
attend to the wants and habits of their plants. For Pelargoniums 
and Lobelias they have an empty room in the next cottage. The 
Fuchsias and Echeverias stood in the open ground. Little or no 
manure is used in the garden : a more certain result, it is found, 
is obtained by now and then taking away some surface soil and 
replacing it by earth in which Potatoes have been grown and 
which for the Potatoes had been well enriched. 
On the house wall facing the east a Pear tree is grown, fruitless 
this year; a very fine Bigarreau Cherry running round even to 
the north is loaded with fruits.—A. M. B., Mid-Lincoln, 
[We are informed that this garden is worked entirely by the 
daughters of the owner, and it would be an advantage if more of 
the daughters of England were to engage in similar healthy and 
pleasant pursuits, and make cottage homes generally bright and 
cheerful.] 
CHAPTERS ON INSECTS FOR GARDENERS.—No. 25. 
NEW SERIES. 
Unlikely as the circumstance might seem at first, consider¬ 
ing that the study of such tiny beings appears a very dry subject 
indeed, the history of mites is not without its comical aspect. 
The observers of their habits have been perplexed by some of the 
results of bringing the microscope to bear upon them, since this 
has at times shown mites in a form or position that seemed mys¬ 
terious. For instance, a mite has been noticed twisting itself about 
until the skin cracked, and a very different mite in aspect came 
forth—an example, some said, of a mite being the prey of another 
species almost as large as itself. Afterwards it was supposed that 
in this and similar cases there was only a transformation from 
the larval to the perfect stage, rapid and not gradual. And in 
several of the groups (a specimen of which we show) the larva 
of a mite is unlike the adult mite. Then, again, amongst the 
Hypopidae some species have been thought to undergo at least 
six or seven changes before reaching maturity, and brisk have 
been the discussions as to the nature of these, and whether the 
possession of six legs only is always significant of a larval con¬ 
dition. The water mite3 may be dismissed with the remark that 
it is believed they are mostly carnivorous, attacking larger insects 
or else feeding upon very diminutive infusoria. 
The beetle mites with a horny thorax, that is of a blackish or 
brownish colour, are believed to be as plentiful in England as 
they are in France ; but only two or three species have been 
noted as natives of these islands, the best known of which is 
Damajus corticulatus, to which has been given the English name 
of the “black stone tick.” These mites may be found in parties 
during the winter months under pieces of Pear bark that have 
been loosened by some means ; in warm weather they scatter 
about on the trunks or branches. If it be necessary to interfere 
with these mites, as Curtis supposed, the winter would be the 
period to catch them en masse; but Boisduval pleads in their 
behalf, and certainly on his showing they are friends not foes 
to horticulture. He has seen them busily engaged in devouring 
aphides, and thrips in all its stages, and believes that these and 
similar pests are the natural food of the black stone tick. About 
Paris the species has been taken in hothouses as well as on fruit 
trees, though not in England to my knowledge. The young tick 
has only six feet; the adult is as large as the head of an average 
pin, and it breathes by means of two curious tubes in the neck. 
It has no eyes seemingly ; those organs are in fact lacking amongst 
the beetle mites generally. Others of them are partial to moss, 
especially in damp spots, and specimens have been taken at 
Spitzbergen, proving that they are a hardy race. 
The family of the Tyroglyphidm have received the popular 
appellation of cheese mites bestowed upon them by some natu¬ 
ralists. This is incorrect, because the substance indicated only 
furnishes food to a part of them. Thus one species is familiar to 
every collector of insects as the devourer of the fleshy or fatty 
portions of specimens kept in boxes and cabinets. Other species 
have their points of interest to the gardener. These mites have 
soft and smooth bodies, with jaws or mandibles that in shape 
resemble the claws of a crab. Rhizoglyphus echinopus, with no 
melodious name, is injurious, though not to a great extent; it is a 
white globular mite, fond of secreting itself amongst the scales of 
Liliaceous plants, especially during autumn. It has often been 
detected upon the Hyacinth, and Mr. Murray thinks the species 
also resorts to the roots of various plants. Like many of their 
brethren they will crawl off the substance they frequent on to the 
skin of any human being near, causing an irritation though not 
making punctures. 
Another species in the above genus is of importance from its 
presumed connection with the Phylloxera ; Mr. Biley, reporting 
upon it from the United States, asserted that when young this 
mite imbibed the juices of roots injured by the Phylloxera, and 
aflerwards attacked and ate the root-haunting type of this foe of 
the Vine. Hence some suggested that if the species B. phyl¬ 
loxeras could be naturalised in Europe it would check the increase 
of a formidable Vine pest; but a French student of these and 
other mites discovered them upon the roots of the Vine, and he 
could not perceive that they interfered at all with the Phylloxera. 
Other insects in the genus Rhizoglyphus seem restricted to vege¬ 
table food, and so it is highly probable that the mite in question 
only comes to feast upon the fluids that are exuded through the 
proceedings of the Phylloxera, with which it does not meddle. 
R. Rostro-serratus is about the size of a cheese mite, grey in 
colour, and with a curious series of humps] along the back. It 
occurs in large parties upon cultivated Mushrooms, which, in the 
course of a day or two from their being first infested by the mite, 
become black and putrid. 
The very abundant cheese mite we mention only briefly. It 
bears also the name of Tyroglyphus siro. Gardeners, like other 
folks, occasionally make a dinner or a supper off bread and 
cheese, and many like the latter all the better should it be 
“ mitey.” But some naturalists have endeavoured to show that 
by the promiscuous swallowing of cheese mites there may be 
originated divers internal complaints in the human subject. It 
is possible that in very exceptional cases these may manage to live 
in the stomach and multiply there. Ordinarily they are doubt¬ 
less soon digested, and no harm ensues. As, however, a rather 
too accurate observer has stated that the devourer of mitey cheese 
eats not cheese only but “ eggs of mites old and new, larvae, cast 
skins, perfect mites, excrement in minute greyish balls, and 
spores of microscopic fungi,” the savoury article has its un¬ 
attractive if not its unwholesome aspect. A relative of the 
cheese mite taken in North America, T. malus, is useful because 
it devours the mussel scale of the Apple; it is a long-bodied, 
smooth, short-legged mite. In Ceylon T. translucens, a very 
small species, subsists on a coccus that occurs upon the Coffee 
plant. Mites, it may seem amusing to state, have peculiarities 
in their modes of progression. Those species just described walk 
along deliberately with the head lowered between the first pair 
of legs ; the sugar mites run briskly ; and the mites in the genus 
Cheyletus move by a succession of jumps, holding the while the 
