" Mrs. G. R.," Pemberton, N. J., writes: " Your remarks on page 31 of the January number of the Gardeners' Monthly, give me courage to write you on a subject in which I am much interested. I send you with this mail a tin box containingasmall bunch of yellow cocoons, from which little black flies are hatching. I inclose with it some of the flies that have hatched, and I have reason to think that some of them will be alive when it reaches you, as a number of them have lived 405 days in my incubator, which is an inverted tumbler on the mantel, back of the stove. A friend hasjust told me that she found in a work on entomology, a description answering to this insect, and it said the little black fly destroyed the cabbage worm. We found a great number of these cocoons on the under side of the leaves of our Carnation plants, when we took them in the greenhouse last fall. I shall be under great obligations to you if you will tell me what they are, and whether they are friends or enemies; and I would like very much to know if they have any connection with the common brown grub that does so much damage in the spring. They cut off hundreds of our Carnations and other plants last spring.

At that time I brought two of them in the house and placed them in a pan of soil; after they had been there a number of days, one of them showed great uneasiness, as if trying to escape from the pan; then I was called away for fifteen or twenty minutes, and when I looked again the grub had shrunk to one-third its former size, and close by it lay a bunch of what looked like yellow silk floss, and squirming all through it a great number of tiny white grubs. Now I cannot say that the flies gave birth to those little grubs and the floss that enveloped them, as I did not see the action, but it is the only way in which I can account for their being there. The grub died in a short time; the other grub went into the chrysalis state and finally got destroyed. It seems improbable to me that there is any connection in the two or three forms of insect life that I have mentioned. I give you the facts as they have come under my observation, hoping you will give me some light on the subject, which I earnestly desire, and which is my only apology for writing you such a long letter I have also fifteen katy-did eggs in my incubator which have not hatched yet.

I am very curious to see what they will develop".

[There were no signs of black flies in the box. The cocoons seem to belong to Apanteles, a class of Microgasters, that are friends rather than enemies. The grub that is often so destructive to the roots of flowers is generally the larvae of the May Beetle, and we know of no other that is so destructive. It is said that a little earth taken away around each plant and a little salt placed therein, will kill these grubs; but salt in an overdose will kill the plants as well. Just how much salt to employ must be a matter of careful experiment. Lime water destroys some of these terrestrial creatures without injuring the plants, and it may be of service as against this enemy. - Ed. G. M].