Of the diseases to which cultivated violets are subject Mr. P. H. Dorsett, of the Department of Agriculture, names four as especially dangerous:  Spot disease, producing whitish spots on the foliage; root rot, apt to attack young plants transplanted in hot, dry weather; wet rot, a fungus apt to appear in too moist air or where ventilation is insufficient; and yellowing, of the cause of which little is known.  Any of these diseases is difficult to exterminate when it once gains a foothold.  The best thing to do is to get strong, vigorous cuttings, and then to give careful attention to watering, cultivation, and ventilation, and the destruction of dead and dying leaves and all runners as fast as they appear.

Among insect enemies, the aphids, red spiders, eel worms, gall flies, and slugs may be mentioned.  Most of these can be easiest controlled by hydrocyanic acid gas treatment.

Chrysanthemums, especially of preternatural size and bizarre colors—­the college colors at football games, for instance—­are in great demand.  They are extremely decorative, and their remarkable lasting quality insures their permanent popularity.  I have heard that the unexpanded bud can be cooked like cauliflower for the table; but we have not learned to use them in that way.  In Japan and China the leaves of the chrysanthemum are esteemed as a salad.  One attempt has been made by English gardeners to introduce this use of them into England, but it was unsuccessful.

The annual shows of chrysanthemums and of roses indicate the importance of the business.

It is not generally known, but the poppies are coming into favor for cut flowers in spite of the fact that they do not keep very well.  Miss Edith Granger avoids this difficulty, as she explains in the Garden Magazine, “by picking off all blooms that have not already lost their petals in the evening, so that in the morning all the open flowers will be new ones.  These are cut as early as possible, even while the dew is still upon them, and plunged immediately into deep water.”

You need not be discouraged by the low prices at which flowers, especially violets and roses, are often offered in the streets.  Those flowers are the discarded stock or delayed shipments of the swell florists.  You will find that those flowers are fading, or revived with salt, and will not keep.

That they are so peddled, shows that everybody, at hotels, dinners, funerals, weddings, in the home, and the young men for the young women, want flowers, the loveliest things ever made without souls.  We have only to supply such a want to find our place in life.

As a side line the common flowers will bring good prices; mignonette, bachelor buttons, cosmos, and even nasturtiums, which you can’t keep from growing if you just stick the seed in the ground, or lilies of the valley, which you can hardly get rid of once they start, never go begging, if they are fresh.