636 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
June 7, 1890. 
a back yard or a front garden. The musical eat, the 
erring dog, the humble ass of the coster, the skittish 
cob of the lively butcher, the rabbit of commerce 
(Felis domestica)—these are for all to study who take 
their walks abroad.— But-besides them there are carni¬ 
vorous animals which lurk in gutters and ditches ; 
rodentia reside in our cupboards ; specimens of 
Erinaceus vulgaris appear in secluded spots ; and the 
mounds of Talpce trip up our unwary footsteps. But 
keen as are the joys of the suburban animal lover, they 
pale beside the more varied pleasures of the insect 
fancier. A back garden in suburban London affords 
so vast and varied a feast to the entomologist that 
nothing but deplorable ignorance of the happy hunting- 
grounds at home can drive our eminent naturalists to 
foreign shores to find new crawling and flying creatures. 
Some years ago the late lamented Mr. J. G. Wood was 
so impressed by the varied insect life which he found 
in a suburban garden, that he asked the writer of this 
paper to keep for him an account of the social and 
political life of the denizens of his bushes and plants. 
As he had a constitutional objection to working between 
meals the account was rrnfortunately never completed 
in time to meet the eye of the most charming of all 
naturalists—the man to whom most parents in this 
kingdom should feel that they owe a debt of gratitude. 
But a few of the observations thus casually collected 
may be of interest to the readers of this paper. 
“To begin with a rough classification, the natural 
history world as regards Inseeta may be roughly 
divided into two classes—leggy creatures that can fly 
and those that can’t. But this does not always hold 
good. What is true at one time is not true at another. 
A crawling beast to-day may be a flying abomination 
to-morrow, and vice versa. There is no creature so 
liable to change as an insect; his opinions cannot be 
worth anything on any subject; for to-day he is a hard 
shelled creature, to-morrow a mass of pulp. To-day an 
express train could not keep up with his pace, yesterday 
he lay on the ground inert as a bit of stick.. There is 
only one certainty about insects, and that is that the 
study of them does not eonduee to piety. The presence 
of green flies (and their numbers are only to be approxi¬ 
mately guessed at in millions) causes a severe strain 
upon the most devout believer. We all know that even 
great and good men have questioned the utility of 
wasps ; yet compared with green flies wasps have many 
points of advantage. They are handsome to begin with; 
green-flies are siekeningly repulsive in appearance. A 
wasp generally lets you know where he is—challenges 
you, as it were, to come and have it out w'ith him ; but 
green-flies descend in their myriads by stealth, and 
cover your innocent Rosebuds with ignominy, make 
them nourish a bestial population of squelchy, sticky, 
loathsome deformities; and then, having made a 
blackened corpse of a fair and promising bud, depart in 
bloated swarms to bring shame and desolation on other 
innocent nurselings. 
“If it were possible in creation to find anything 
more despicable than green-fly, it might be held that a 
certain loathly worm that hides its early career in a 
fold of a tender green leaf, and ultimately, after reducing 
the foliage to lacework, buries itself in the very heart 
of the bud and eats out its centre, had finally reached 
the lowest depths of moral degradation. 
“ Ho amount of intellect will enable a man to keep 
ahead of an insect;. What can a creature which has to 
be elaborately born and fed and cared for during a long 
series of years do against a perky little winged atom, 
which can changoitself from one thing to another with 
the greatest ease, and can live underground or on the 
ground or in the air with equal unconcern? What 
man can reproduce five thousand grown-up /editions of 
himself in a single day ? Goliath couldn’t do it ; but 
a little insect can. Five thousand or thereabouts—one 
never can tell to a thousand or two, up or down, what 
an insect can do in this way. Malthus lived and died 
all for no use, so far as insects are concerned ; they 
don’t care if they do over-populate the world—they 
rather like it. The only ennobling sentiment to which 
the study of insect life gives rise is a fervent gratitude 
for the invention of birds ; they do a little towards 
keeping down a race of creatures that really seem to 
have very little business in this world at all. Who 
can justify the existence of the mosquito, except upon 
the hypothesis.that this is a vale of tears (which it 
ought not to be), and that sorrow and suffering are 
good for us (as perhaps they are) ? But what about the 
mosquito in spots where there are no human beings to 
puncture and madden ? Yet travellers tell us that 
there they are, swarms of them, in the most uninhabit¬ 
able spots on the surface of the globe. Then there is 
the existence of the green-fly to be justified. Have 
our Roses caught original sin from us, and is it neces¬ 
sary for them to be disciplined ? No, the existence of 
green-fly is a puzzle which cannot ever be solved ; but 
we must accept the stubborn fact, and very stubborn it 
is. To the green-flies syringes are a mockery, smoking 
them a vain delusion, and tobacco-water gives them 
fresh energy. As the Huns overran the nobler races of 
central Europe, so the green-flies have conquered us. 
They are not always green, by the way—they are some¬ 
times red ; and they keep a sort of ghostly being with 
attenuated body and white wings, which (for all we 
know) may be their astral body or spiritual essence. 
Certainly they look more like disembodied spirits than 
any other insects that ever were seen. 
“Slugs are scarcelylnsects, being entirely composed 
ot skin and squash ; but so are caterpillars, and they 
turn into flying creatures. Perhaps slugs do so too : 
it would be quite in keeping with the ethics of the 
insect world to pretend to be one thing and develop 
into something else. Earwigs are hard and lively 
insects. We never tried the experiment of Pennius, 
as recommended by Sir Thomas Browne, with regard to 
making them fly ; a foot with a hard substance under¬ 
neath and an earwig between is the only scientific 
experiment which we have made in connection with 
their organisms. Of red-spiders the depravity and 
malignity are such that it were better not to speak of 
them. They make life among the fruit bushes well 
nigh unendurable in the summer. There is a simple 
way of catchingjthose which adhere to one’s garments, 
as they do in myriads. Take the clothes off and hang 
them on a peg or end of a bed or any pointed place. 
In a few hours’ time the highest spot of those garments 
will be scarlet with the minute forms, which are singly 
almost undistinguishable to the naked eye. When 
found make an example of them, in the probably vain 
hope of reforming their fellows.” 
-- >% ■ < «- 
ARDENING fllSCELLANY. 
-G-- 
Double Lapagerias. 
At p. 56, vol. v., we described a double-flowered 
Lapageria, and the other day received a more perfect 
one from Mr. James Brown, gardener to R. B. White, 
Esq., Arddarroch. The flower previously described had 
fourteen segments, of which the sepals or three short 
ones were smaller than usual, and there were two styles. 
The flower recently sent us had eighteen segments, of 
which the outer ones were of the normal size. There 
were seven stamens, of which four were perfect, one 
without an anther, another with one anther lobe perfect, 
while its counterpart was dilated and petaloid, and the 
seventh had both its anther lobes petaloid. There was 
only one style with four stigmas. The flower as a whole 
was very double and widely expanded at the mouth to 
accommodate the supernumerary segments, and 
although we cannot describe it as beautiful, it was very 
singular and interesting botanically, and quite unlike 
any other double flower. 
Musa Ensete in Fruit. 
This Abyssinian species is well known for the hand¬ 
some proportions of its leaves, and its hardiness and 
usefulness for sub-tropical gardening purposes ; but in 
few private establishments can it be afforded the neces¬ 
sary accommodation to attain a sufficient size to flower. 
There is a magnificent specimen at Syon House, 
Brentford, where it has been increasing in size for some 
years past. Around its base are some suckers, one or 
two of which in themselves constitute good-sized plants. 
The original or oldest specimen is now in fruit, and the 
huge pendulous bunch is about 15 ft. or 16 ft. from the 
ground. The peduncle or stalk is as thick as the wrist, 
and the large blackish purple fruits project horizontally 
from the axis. The bracts of the staminal flowers are 
also of the same hue or black, and of striking size. 
One we measured was 9 ins. long by ins. broad, 
leathery, and of great substance. They drop very 
tardily. 
Pentapterygium rugosum. 
Possibly many would prefer to speak of this plant 
under the name of Yaccinium rugosum, as being more 
easily remembered. The generic name is taken from 
two Greek words signifying five little wings, in allusion 
to the five wings or acute angles of the corolla which is 
of a pale pinkish hue, curiously and beautifully marbled 
between the wings, with short wavy brownish purple or 
blood-red lines which meet in the middle line to form a 
series of angles all along the flat faces. The flowers are 
produced in pendent clusters from the axils of the 
leaves, and the red calyx adds to their conspicuous 
character. The leaves are oblong-lanceolate, serrated, 
leathery and are of a beautiful purplish red while un¬ 
folding. The species is a native of the Khasia Mountains, 
and is admirably adapted for basket culture, as it is 
grown by Mr. Wythes, gardener to the Duke of 
Northumberland, Syon House, Brentford. 
Inconstancy of Primula japonica alba. 
Two years ago some seedlings of this variety of Primula 
japonica flowered freely, and with the exception of the 
customary orange ring surrounding the eye, the flowers 
were of the purest white. Last year they flowered 
even better, and equally pure. The plants have 
occupied the same position exactly since they were first 
planted, and now they are flowering for the third time, 
with exception of one specimen, which is rather tardy. 
Another has the ordinary crimson flowers of the type, 
while a third is of a very mixed character. The 
flowers of the lowest whorl are variously splashed with 
lilac on a white ground, and occasionally some of the 
segments of the corolla are white. Amongst the 
flowers of the uppermost whorls, two are pure white 
with an orange eye, as the whole of the flowers of the 
inflorescence were in 1888 and 1889. The specimens 
in question are planted in ordinary garden soil. 
-- 
SEASONABLE WORK IN THE 
GARDEN. 
Achimenes, Tyd.eas.— As these attain some size and 
begin to show their flower buds, they will be greatly 
assisted by applications of weak liquid manure. The 
stems should be neatly staked before they bend over 
with their own weight, or otherwise get damaged. 
Eucharis and Pancratiums. —If it is desired to 
retard the flowering period of these subjects till a 
certain date, it may be done by placing them in a 
greenhouse or some similarly cool structure after the 
flowers spikes appear. 
Chinese Primulas.— Do not overlook there-potting 
of young plants, as the pots become filled "with roots 
and the leaves attain size. Starving at this season will 
induce early flowering, but the plants would be 
miserably small. 
Double Chinese Primulas.— The old-fashioned plan 
was to propagate these by cuttings. It is a much 
better plan to layer the young shoots, so to speak, than 
to take them off and root them. Remove a few of the 
older leaves from the bottom of the shoots ; then make 
up a light compost consisting largely of leaf-soil and 
sand. Top-dress the pots with this, covering the base 
of the shoots or offsets. Place the plants in a house 
with a warm damp atmosphere, and keep them moist 
till roots are emitted from the offsets, after which the 
latter may be severed from the parent stock, and treated 
as separate plants already rooted. 
Browallia elata. —There are now several differ¬ 
ently coloured varieties of this plant in cultivation, but 
none of them excel the typical blue form, except those 
which may exhibit darker shades. If seeds be sown 
now, a useful batch of plants may be obtained for 
flowering late in autumn and in winter. 
Cyclamens. —Old plants in pits or frames, and 
which are intended for growing on another year, should 
not be allowed to get dry. Less water will be required 
than when growing or flowering, but the soil must be 
kept moderately moist. The young seedlings should 
be encouraged to grow by regular watering, and the 
lights should be closed about four or five p.m., syringing 
them at that time in order to create a moist and genial 
atmosphere. 
Fuchsias. —Old plants not wanted to flower early 
may be stood out of doors in some sheltered position, 
and looked after in the matter of watering. This will 
have the effect of producing short sturdy growth, and 
when coming into flower they may be stood on the 
benches of the greenhouse. Young plants for autumn 
flowering are best grown in frames freely ventilated 
and regularly stopped according to the desired shape. 
Sub-tropical Bedding. —In well-sheltered gardens 
in the south the bedding out of Palms, Dracamas, 
Yuccas, Daturas, Abutilons, and such things may be 
proceeded with at once. The more tender subjects, 
such as Alternantheras, Heliotropes, Coleus, and 
others, may be left till the last ; but the hardy and 
half-hardy subjects used for carpeting, dividing lines, 
&e., may be got into position as soon as the extent of 
labour will permit. 
