The spikes produced in this way do not equal in thickness and substance of petal the flowers which come from more carefully prepared clumps imported from Berlin, but they are fine and strong, and above all most abundant.  I can not only supply the house and small vases for the church, but also send away boxes of the flowers to friends at a distance, besides the many gifts which can be made to those who are ill or invalids.  Few gifts at such a time are more acceptable than a fragrant nosegay of lily of the valley.  In order to keep the supply of prepared roots ready year after year, a plot of ground has only to be planted each autumn, so that in the rotation of years it may be ready for forcing when its turn shall come.

As the season advances, as every one knows who has attempted to force the lily of the valley, much less time is taken in bringing the flowers to perfection under precisely the same circumstances as those in which the first sods are forced.  In February or earlier the buds are more unwilling to start; there seems to be a natural repugnance against being so soon forced out of the winter’s sleep and rest.  But when the flowers do come, they are nearly as fine and their leaves are quite as abundant in this way of forcing as from the pieces introduced much later into heat.  It would be easy to preserve the squares after all the flowers are gathered, but I found that they would not, like strawberries, kindly furnish forth another crop later on in the year, and, therefore, mine are flung away; and I have often pitied the tender leaves in the frost and snow after their short sojourn in the hot climate of the vinery.  But the reserve bed will always supply an ample quantity of fresh heads, and it is best to take the new plants for preparation in the kitchen garden from this reserve bed.

This very simple method of forcing lilies of the valley is within the reach of any one who has even a small garden and a warm house, and these two things are becoming more and more common among us every day.—­A Gloucestershire Parson, in The Garden.

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[Continued from supplement, No. 802, page 12820.]

REPORT ON INSECTS.

The onion maggot.

Phorbia ceparum (Meig.)

Early in June a somewhat hairy fly, Fig. 9, may be seen flying about, and depositing its eggs on the leaves of the young onion plants, near the roots, Fig. 10.

[Illustration:  Fig. 9.]

Dr. Fitch describes this fly as follows:  “It has a considerable resemblance to the common house fly, though when the two are placed side by side, this is observed as being more slender in its form.  The two sexes are readily distinguished from each other by the eyes, which in the males are close together, and so large as to occupy almost the whole surface of the head, while in the females they are widely separated from each other.  These flies are of an ash gray color, with the head silvery, and a rusty black stripe between the eyes, forked at its hind end.  And this species is particularly distinguished by having a row of black spots along the middle of the abdomen or hind body, which sometimes run into each other, and then forming a continuous stripe.