cholera-year, and we shall not want any), the squashes (small loss),
and the melons (which never ripen). The best way to deal with the
striped bug is to sit down by the hills, and patiently watch for him.
If you are spry, you can annoy him. This, however, takes time. It
takes all day and part of the night. For he flieth in darkness, and
wasteth at noonday. If you get up before the dew is off the plants,
--it goes off very early,--you can sprinkle soot on the plant (soot is
my panacea: if I can get the disease of a plant reduced to the
necessity of soot, I am all right) and soot is unpleasant to the bug.
But the best thing to do is to set a toad to catch the bugs. The
toad at once establishes the most intimate relations with the bug.
It is a pleasure to see such unity among the lower animals. The
difficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the hill. If you know
your toad, it is all right. If you do not, you must build a tight
fence round the plants, which the toad cannot jump over. This,
however, introduces a new element. I find that I have a zoological
garden on my hands. It is an unexpected result of my little
enterprise, which never aspired to the completeness of the Paris
"Jardin des Plantes."




FOURTH WEEK

Orthodoxy is at a low ebb. Only two clergymen accepted my offer to
come and help hoe my potatoes for the privilege of using my vegetable
total-depravity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass as some
call it; and those two did not bring hoes. There seems to be a lack
of disposition to hoe among our educated clergy. I am bound to say