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SURE SHOT FOR ROSE SLUGS

Make a tea of tobacco-stems and a soap-suds of whale-oil or carbolic soap, mix, and apply to the bush with a sprinkler, turning the bush so as to wet the under as well as the upper part of the leaves; apply before the sun is up three or four times.

IVIES. A Successful cultivator of ivies feeds them with iron and cod-liver oil; the iron in form of rusty nails, mixed into the earth. Another produced a luxurious growth by watering once a week with tobacco-water; making a tea of refuse tobacco-leaves and stems, or of coarse tobacco. The water from the washing of fresh beef is also of great benefit to ivies. Moisten the leaves with a sponge wet in tea, or put tea-leaves around the plant.

TO KEEP PLANTS WITHOUT A FIRE AT NIGHT. - Have made of wood or zinc a tray about four inches deep, with a handle on either end, water-tightpaint it outside and in, put in each corner a post as high as the tallest of your plants, and it is ready for use. Arrange your flower-pots in it, and fill between them with sawdust; this absorbs the moisture falling from the plants when you water them, and retains the warmth acquired during the day, keeping the temperature of the roots even. When you retire at night spread over the posts a blanket or shawl, and there is no danger of freezing, The tray may be placed on a stand or table and easily moved about.

WINDOW GARDENING. All the varieties of English ivy, the hoyacarnosa, the passion flower, the jasmine, the pilogyne suavis, and begonias are especially suitable for window culture. Very pretty effects may be produced at the cost of a few cents, by planting verbenas, morning-glories, cobea scandens, and the maurandias in baskets or flower-pots, which may be concealed behind statuary or bronzes. The best fertilizer for them or any other house plants is that afforded by the tea-pot; the cold tea-grounds usually thrown away, if poured as a libation to these household fairies, will produce a miracle of beauty and perfume.