Tobacco smoke is well-known as a specific remedy for the minute insects infesting roses and other garden plants. Sometimes a keg turned bottom upwards over the plants will suffice to confine the smoke sufficiently, but a better method is to place a newspaper around the plant, with its lower edge snug upon the ground, and its top portion gathered together and tied with a string, the paper thus forming an impervious envelop about the plant. It is a question whether the fumigation of plants may not be applied to those of larger growth and more common or extended cultivation than garden shrubs, but our experiments in this line, made some years ago, while satisfactory in showing that the smoke of cheaper materials than tobacco will suffice to kill the insects, were decided failures in their practical results. The experiments were instituted to determine whether the means indicated could be applied to effect the destruction of the hop aphis, which destroys annually tens of thousands of dollars' worth of that costly crop. On hop leaves thickly infested with the aphis, the smoke of any vegetable refuse was found sufficient to kill the vermin when the leaves were confined, a few at a time, within a closed receptacle.

But on surrounding a hill of hops (the vines upon the poles in the usual manner) with a tall shell made of paper pasted on wooden frames, and filling this shell or envelop with smoke from a brazier, no visible effect was produced on the insects. It was found impossible to make the portable envelop perfectly tight, and the admission of air to dilute the smoke was doubtless the cause of the failure, and this difficulty is one apparently impossible to overcome. - Ex.