ON LAYING OUT. 
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flowers. They will not walk upon straw or ashes strewed thickly 
round any plant: they equally dislike a fence of*sticks placed 
round a plot, with bits of white paper or card fastened to each 
stick ; or a string carried round the sticks a foot or two high. 
If they cannot creep under a slight fence, they never attempt to 
leap over it. If a stick is run into the ground close to a plant, 
and other sticks are slanted from the ground towards the center, 
the plant will remain untouched, be the frost of ever so long 
duration. 
Snails are disagreeable intruders, but the following method is 
an exterminating war of short duration :— 
Throw cabbage leaves upon your borders over night; in the 
morning, early, you will find them covered underneath with 
snails, which have taken refuge there. Thus they are easily 
taken and destroyed. 
Earwigs are taken in great numbers by hanging gallipots, 
tubes, or any such receptacle, upon low sticks in the borders over 
night. In these they shelter themselves, and are consequently 
victimized in the morning. The gallipots, broken bottles, &e., 
should be placed upon the stick like a man’s hat, that the vermin 
may ascend into them. 
Ants are very great enemies to flowers ; but I know no method 
of attacking them, except in their own strongholds, which I have 
always done with cruel intrepidity and success. My only plan 
was to lay open the little ant-hill, and pour boiling water upon 
the busy insects, which destroyed at once the commonwealth, 
and the eggs deposited within the mound. In some places ants 
are extremely large and abundant, and they quickly destroy the 
beauty of a flower by attacking its root and heart.* 
* The Emperor Pagonatus, who wrote a treatise upon agriculture, assures 
us, that to clear a garden of ants, we should burn empty snail shells with 
storax wood, and throw the ashes upon the Ant-hills, which obliges them to 
remove. I never tried this method. 
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