274 
THE AMATEUR’S FLOWER GARDEN. 
and so long as tlie lettuce lasts, the snails and slugs will not 
touch a dahlia. There is much to be done in this way with¬ 
out incurring the risk of multiplying the vermin on a place, 
because your provisions may be turned to account as traps, 
and by examining the lettuces every night by the aid of a 
lamp, you may bag all the snails in the district, and at the 
end of the undertaking have a lot of nice lettuce for the table. 
For a last word, we say, encourage the small birds, for they 
are wonderful aids to the amateur gardener as destroyers of 
insects. The sparrows may perhaps vex you by nibbling 
your crocuses, and the blackbirds may steal your cherries; 
but remember they cannot trouble you in this sort of way all 
the year round. They will be gobbling up snails and cater¬ 
pillars and butterflies in the dewy dawn, when you perhaps 
are sleeping and unhappily unconscious of the benefactions of 
your feathered friends. 
To catch and kill vermin must be the constant duty of 
every amateur gardener. The large marauders, such as 
snails and woodlice, will never cease from troubling, and it 
may be matter for thankfulness that they pronounce a dread 
sentence against the gardener who, in the midst of work> 
goes to sleep. You must catch the vagabonds. Go to work 
in this way. Lay little heaps of lettuce leaves in cool, quiet 
places, and examine them at dusk and daybreak. Catch and 
kill in any way you please :a pot of brine is a very good bath 
for the purpose. Lay about also in the neighbourhood of choice 
subjects to which snails are partial, nice young cabbage 
leaves slightly smeared with rank butter; catch and kill as 
before. Lay about in cool quiet spots small heaps of fresh 
brewers’ grains ; catch and kill as before. Where woodlice 
abound, take some dirty flower-pots (always combine a little 
dirt of some sort with vermin traps, for vermin are extrava¬ 
gantly fond of dirt), and fill these dirty flower-pots with dry 
moss and crocks mixed together. Place them where the 
vermin abound, and cover each with a tuft of dry moss. 
Every other day, proceed to catch and kill in this simple 
manner. Have a large pailful of boiling water. Take up a 
pot quietly, and quickly shoot out its contents into the water. 
You clear away your enemies by thousands in this way; there 
is no trap to equal a dirty pot filled with dirty crocks, and 
dirty (but dry) moss. If there arises any peculiar difficulty, 
such as a choice plant being eaten nightly, and you cannot 
