It may be that what I allude to and shall attempt to describe is known to some of the readers of the Gardeners' Monthly, who represent such a wide and varied experience. However, I use the adjective "new," for the reason that it was so to me, and because on a reference to some of the best treatises on the rose I did not find an insect of this description mentioned among the enemies of the rose.

During the winter of 1884-85, dropping in at one of the greenhouse establishments of this vicinity, the proprietor called my attention to the singular behavior of some of the roses planted on the benches for winter blooming, and asked me to what source I might attribute the trouble. Perceiving at once that it was not a disease of the foliage and that it was not contagious, or of a rapidly spreading nature, I went to work examining. I pulled up some of the plants and found the "heel" enlarged by a warty excrescence or monstrous growth of the cortical tissue; the main roots were in like manner affected. On pulling up the plants I had noticed in the soil adhering to the heel and roots some small worms, and small round holes bored in the bark here and there.

Pulling open some of these warts I found the soft tissue, as it were, filled with minute white grubs or worms. On further examination I found these insects in various stages of maturity, and traced them to the full grown worm I had at first observed, and that the small holes I had seen bored in the bark were due to the skill of these little workmen, which are a half-inch - sometimes approaching three-fourths of an inch - in length, and in diameter about one-thirty-second of an inch. The body is articulated, smooth, hard, of a bony nature, and of a dull dirt color. The head was small in proportion to the body and provided with a pair of sharp mandibles. The legs were numerous along the length of the body, incurved and sharp pointed, seeming to characterize the insect as some species of the "thousand-legged worm." They evidently fed on the bark of the roots, and boring into the tissue there laid their eggs, while from the disturbance the bark grew distorted into these warty excrescences which became the nests of the young.

Some of the soil in which the roses grew was unmanured, and in this the roses were not affected. Others grew in a soil with cow manure in mixture, and in this the roses were healthy also, while the roses affected grew in a soil consisting partly of cow manure in which were beech leaves that had been used as bedding for the animal and were not completely rotted.

So I inferred that the presence of these particular insects in the soil was due to the beech leaves on which the eggs had been deposited and were now hatched out by the genial warmth of the greenhouse; and, following out their inherent instinct to multiply as well as to live, had gone to work on the roses, eating and laying eggs in the bark; though possibly or probably this is not the plant to which this insect is a natural enemy.

New Albany, Ind.