may be found coated with its living world of insect life; some green, some brown, or brownish, but all absorbed in one pursuit-sucking the lifejuice from every shoot and leaf; no enemy to the rose is so persevering or so injurious, for in twentyfour hours those fine luxuriant shoots crowned with their buds of promise will, if left uncared for, be withered and unsightly. It is a source of real pleasure to be able to give a simple and most efficient remedy for this pest. The first intimation of it, if I mistake not, appeared in the 'Gardener's Chronicle;' it is now one of those valuable compounds that will endure as long as gardens are cared for, for it is death to every description of aphis.

Take four ounces of quassia chips, and boil them ten minutes in a gallon of soft water; strain off the chips, and add four ounces of soft soap, which should be dissolved in it as it cools, stirring it before using.

If roses on walls are infested, the syringe may be employed, but for standard roses and rosebushes it may be applied after the following method. Place a piece of slate or glass upright in the left hand, then apply this to the shoots of the tree so that they rest against it; then with a moderate-sized painter's brush in the right hand, well saturated with the mixture, brush every leaf and shoot upwards; two or three minutes will

finish the business. After ten minutes or so have elapsed, the dead and dying insects should be washed off the tree with pure water from a syringe having the usual rose affixed to it. There is no occasion to mention any other remedy for the rose aphis; all that have hitherto been given in the rose books are more or less offensive, such as fumigation, tobacco water, &c. The decoction of quassia and soft soap is the least offensive and most efficacious of all aphis remedies. In early spring, often in March but more frequently in April, the rose weevil'Otiorhynchus,' which hides itself either in crevices of the bark or in the ground, often commits great ravages by eating out the centre of each bud, and seems to favour more particularly nice plump buds in standard dog-rose stocks about which you are more than usually anxious. He can only be caught at night, and from his dark brown coat and size approaching the lady bird, a sharp eye and bright light must be employed.

In the 'merry month of May,' the rose caterpillar makes his appearance; he may soon be detected, for he glues a leaf or two together to form his habitation. As soon as such leaves are perceived—and every morning the trees should be examined these glued leaves should be squeezed between finger and thumb so as to crush him effectually, after which the leaf may be cut

off. Nothing but close attention will save your rosebuds from being perforated by him and ruined. No decoctions or infusions are of any use; the only remedy is the crushing one.

There is also the rose grub to be guarded against. It is something like a very short brown caterpillar; he eats into the young and succulent shoot, and must be carefully sought for; his small entrance perforated in the young summer shoot of the rose may sometimes be seen; he should be at once dug out and despatched; there is no cure but this, for if the parent moths are prevented laying their eggs in holes, they will find crevices. small but convenient. Number four of our enemies will make our list complete, at least as far as we know--but there may be hidden foes.

Our present subject is the larva of the saw-fly; this most tiresome pest makes its appearance from July till quite the end of summer, more particularly in dry hot weather, and in warm dry soils. The rose cultivator, if he sees some leaves veined with semi-transparent veins, must at once be on the alert and turn up each leaf to find the enemy; he will soon be found at work eating greedily the under surface of each leaf, so as to make it almost a skeleton, and semi-transparent. He is an ugly little fellow, and cold and clammy like a slug, but he must be sought for diligently, and crushed at once, otherwise your rose garden in a few weeks would become a garden, not of dry

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bones'-but dry leaves, which would flutter in the wind most dismally.

DISEASES.

WE must commence with the most tiresome, if not the most fatal, of rose maladies, the white mildew, which, alas! our favourite autumnal roses too often show in autumn, is most difficult to arrest; it does not kill roses, but it destroys the beauty of the leaves and weakens the tree. Flowers of sulphur sprinkled on the leaves and shoots in the evening when they are moist with dew, and washed off with the syringe the following morning about eight o'clock, will arrest it sometimes. If the weather be hot and the sulphur be suffered to remain on the leaves all the day following, mischief often occurs and the leaves burn. If the weather be cloudy, it may remain on the leaves for twenty-four hours; in all cases syringe the leaves and shoots abundantly with pure water to wash it off.

The Rev. W. Radclyffe recommends 2 oz. of blue vitriol' dissolved in hot water, and then mixed with four gallons of cold soft water; the leaves sprinkled with it night and morning.

In some soils, a species of red fungus attaches itself to the bark in bright orange-red blotches. This species of fungus is not very common; the

cure is to wash the stems and shoots with Gishurst compound; if in winter and early spring, 6 oz. to the gallon of soft water; if in summer, 3 oz. to the gallon will be sufficient. If the blotch does not heal, the red bark should be pared off with a sharp knife, applying to the wound the Forsythic mortar-cow-dung, lime, sand, and wood-ashes; equal quantities, made into a thick paste and spread on the wound with a spatula.

There is yet another red or rather orangecoloured fungus, peculiar to dry soils, which often makes its appearance in August on the under surface of the leaves of roses, more particularly those of the Moss and Provence Roses. I have seen thousands of young and old plants of these two old favourite sorts with the under surface of every leaf covered with a thick coat of impalpable bright orange-coloured dust. No cure has yet been found for this disease; all the fungus remedies have failed. There is a preventive-the roses should be lifted and replanted every autumn, giving them at the same time plenty of manure and stirring the soil three feet deep; rotation in cropping should also be attended to, so as to give the roses a bed in the rose garden which has had a crop of annuals the preceding summer.

In moist soils the stems and branches of rose trees are often disfigured by the growth of moss. They should be dressed in winter with lime and soot, equal quantities, made into a thin paste.