Januahy 27. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
The kitchen-gfirdener lias his potatoes, turnips, carrots, 
and even his onions speckled and disfigured, if not materially I 
injured, by the enemy; but it is to the floral-gardener that ' 
it proves the most unmitigated pest. Snails, slugs, cater¬ 
pillars, and a host of other insect depredators, if not entirely 
vanquished, can be tolerably kept under, by care, industry, 
and ivatchfuluess; but the wireworm, insidious foe, defies 
all ordinary efforts. Hand-pick every spade of fresh earth; 
search as you will, there are sure to be some left to torment 
you; and trap, catch, and destroy them as you may, there is 
always a friend or relation left to revenge their deaths. And 
after leaving his favourite Pinks and I'ansies over night, 
apparently in rude health, the unhappy florist too fre¬ 
quently rises in the morning to find some of his choicest 
varieties (for the rascals invariably prey on these, and 
gradually on such as he has fewest specimens of) prostrate, 
and with flaccid leaves, giving melancholy notice of the 
destroyer within. 
It is unfortimate, too, for florists, that the soil which is 
their staple is that in which the enemy makes his chief 
abode ; for he, like most plants, luxuriates in old pastures, 
and hence there is annually brought into florists’ gardens 
the very foe they are most anxious to keep out. Your readers, 
therefore, will, ! dare say, not unthankfully receive any 
information as to the means of resisting the common 
destroyer. 
As i have no claim to be a professed or practised WTiter 
on gardening matters, I will, as the most convenient mode 
of imparting my small knowledge on this subject, shortly 
explain how I first made sorrowful ac<iuaintance with the 
marauder ; what experiments I tried to get rid of liis com¬ 
panionship, and their results. 
Some few years since, having entered on a small piece of 
ground for gardening purposes, the soil of which had not 
been disturbed, so far as I could learn, since the days when 
Adam was a gentleman, I caused the turf to be peeled off, 
set in a heap, and in due com’se made of it my south border— 
the old soil being excavated, and the decayed turves placed 
therein, to the depth of something like three feet—meaning 
there to grow' most of my florists’ flowers. 
I was advised, by a more experienced gardening friend, 
that as I should probably find a few wdreworms (a hint I 
found to be strictly correct, except in regard to the fewmess 
alluded to), I, under his direction, planted the border the 
first year with culinaries, and certainly some maiwels of the 
vegetable w'orld were produced. Horn carrots particularly 
presented proofs of the numbers, industry, and appetites of 
the wire-workers, and were worthy of exhibition as curio¬ 
sities of horticulture; indeed, all the bulbous vegetables 
suffered much in the same way, where they survived the 
attack ; but, generally speaking, they w'ere, as the Americans 
"say, regularly exquostulatod altogether; but the lettuces, 
which I planted, again and again, seemed to bo the great 
attraction for the vermin; hardly did these get fairly esta¬ 
blished, and begin to prick up, than one after another they 
laid down their leaves again, and I frequently picked ten or 
tw'elve fine, fat, shiny, golden fellows from the stem and 
roots of one small plant, besides others of their friends 
from the immediately surrounding soil, who were, to all 
apjienrance, hastening to the banquet. 
When this had occurred the third time, I hastened to 
take further counsel of my gardening friend. He laughed 
at my lamentations, of course; fordo we not all laugh at 
our neighl'our's small misfortunes when they do not affect 
ourselves ? However, he and other authorities, written 
and oral, that I consulted, having recommended salt, soot, 
lime, and a variety of other nostrums, I, after a great deal 
of consideration and tapping the vacant head, set to work 
to try some experiments. 
1 took six wine-glasses, and having first placed in each 
ten or a do/.en of my golden friends—No. 1 glass, I filled up 
with soot; No. 2, with salt, moistened; No. h, fidth salt, 
dry; No.-t, with powdered lime, slaked; No. .I, with pow¬ 
dered lime, unslaked, and afterwards added sutficient water 
to slake it; and No. (J, wdth genuine guano. To make my 
story as short as possible—at the end of a week my friends 
in Nos. 1, 2, d, and -1 glasses, were all as lively as grigs; 
those in No. -O were mostly dead, but some two or three .still 
survived, though wonderfully shaky, I confess; while those 
in No. (i glass were as dead as door-nails, and were so, I 
.THl 
may mention, twenty-four hours after the guano was 
applied. 
This satisfied me that soot, salt wet or dry, and slaked 
lime, were useless for my purpose, and that even the appli¬ 
cation of quick-lime, in practice, would be equally so; 
because, if applied to the soil, the wireworms would have 
opportunity to escape from the evolution of heat and gases, 
which they had not in the glass ; the only satisfactory result 
which seemed to be obtained was this, that guano was the 
destroyer if it could be applied so as to be brought in 
contact mth the victims. 
It occurred to me also, that if the guano could not be 
applied to destroy, it miglit be useful to protect, so I tried 
this further experiment. I again, in the same ground 
where the plants had been destroyed before, planted eleven 
more rows of lettuces, eleven in a row ; round each plant of 
each other row, and about two inches from the stem, I drew' 
with my finger a shallow' drill, and therein strewed a liberal 
sprinkling of guano, and lightly covered up the drill again. 
The result was, that every plant unprotected was consumed 
by the enemy, while all the plants (with one exception) 
with the guano round them, grew to i)e respectable mem¬ 
bers of lettuce society ; in fact, of rather gigantic dimensions 
too, and were consumed on iny table; and the loss of the 
solitary exception I have spoken of, I attribute to having 
enclosed when planting (though I used great care in this 
respect) a straggler from the enemy’s camp within my 
guanic circle, and he, finding no escape open to him, re¬ 
solved manfully to die in his vocation, for I only found one 
solitary fellow in the plant, when, after a fortnight or so, I 
pulled it up on observing it indicate symptoms of being 
wirew'ormed. 
Believing guano, therefore, to be the ascertained specific 
for my complaint, I soon after gave the border a stiff dressing 
of it; but still, during the whole summer, kept trapping 
with potatoes for the wireworms, and with tiles laid on tlie 
surface for the beetles, of which, as your readers, of course, 
are aw'are, the wireworm (so called) is the larva, and in 
which capacity he is said to seiw’e a destructive apprentice¬ 
ship (and oh ! how willingly would florists cancel the inden¬ 
tures) of four years before changing to the mature insect. 
By these means, and by continually stirring the surface of 
the soil, I much abated the nuisance, and it is well to 
observe that the last-mentioned application is of immense 
service. The wireworm has a rooted antipathy to the iron 
tooth; this is shewn by his natural choice of habitation in 
pastures, old hedgerows, and the like, where the rake and 
the hoe never reach him. Again, we find him burrowing 
just beneath the surface; the rake routs him out, and 
even the superior worm, Blan, finds it aggravating to be 
turned out-of-doors just as he is sitting down to feast. IVe 
shall not, therefore, prematm-ely conclude that the fre¬ 
quently moving the surface makes the place so distasteful a 
residence to the gentleman whose habits we are discussing, 
that he will be inclined to move off as well as a wireworm’s 
locomotives will enable him; and when his time of meta¬ 
morphosis arrives, he will seek for his progeny a home 
where some more feeling, but less industrious gardener, 
will not so frequently invade their repose. 
The second season, I planted my border with cabbages, 
and followed them with Brussel sprouts and brocoli. All 
these clubbed handsomely, not their money, but tbeir roots ; 
so I did not, as you may imagine, get first-rate imoduce. 
During the summer I again, at all convenient seasons, 
trapped and stirred as before, and by the second autumn 
had reason to believe that I had fairly fought and con- 
(piered, for the ensuing spring I planted pinks, pansies, 
ranunculuses, picotees, and polyantliuses on the field of 
battle, and sutt'ered no injury of consequence, either that 
year or afterwards. 
Acting on the experience thus gained, I now invariably 
freely sprinkle each layer of my annual supply of turf with 
guano, as it i.s laid up ; and the heap being well exposed to 
the air by l)eing chopped over several times during the two 
years it is kept before use, I do not find the manure too 
stimulating, and I do find I rarely sutfer from this most 
terrible of florists’ plagues. Whether quick-lime could be 
applied in sufficient quantities to have effect without ren¬ 
dering the soil unsuitable for floral purposes, I am not able 
to say; but I have ascertained, from unquestionable farming 
