To the average American gardener the insect shown in its three stages in the accompanying illustration is of no special interest, because as yet it here does very little damage; but in England the case is different, for these crane flies are there among the very worst of garden pests - attacking a great variety of crops, and often inflicting great injury. In some localities in this country the insect has occasionally been destructive, and it is probable that in the future it will become one of the most serious of our already numerous insect pests.

In England these crane flies are commonly called "Daddy Long-legs," but in America an entirely different creature goes by this name - the long-legged spiders. The latter are never injurious, but on the contrary are, like most spiders, beneficial to man by feeding upon various injurious insects.

The life-history of these crane flies is something as follows: The adult flies (c\ appear in spring, often in great numbers, and deposit numerous eggs in grass lands. In a short time these eggs hatch into small blackish grubs that feed upon the roots of glasses and other plants. They continue feeding for about a year, when they are an inch or more in length, black in color, having no legs, and looking like a of the accompanying illustration. They work either beneath the surface of the soil or beneath rubbish on the surface, and probably devour a great variety of food, consuming dead as well as living vegetation. When fully grown they change to the pupa state, represented at b, and about a fortnight later the adult fly emerges with its long legs and slender wings. It is a fragile creature, the legs easily breaking off, so that it is the despair of the entomologist who attempts to preserve it for his cabinet of specimens.

There is a large number of species of crane flies, and they vary much in size. The figure represents one of the largest American forms. In England, about the only remedy which has been found effec-tive is the hand-picking of the grubs present an excellent opportunity for a great and profitable horticultural gathering. No doubt the most satisfactory arrangements can be made with the management tor space and accommodations for exhibitions. We should like to see an International Horticultural Congress assembled at that time. Such congresses are comparatively frequent in the Old World, and here is the opportunity to extend the practice to America. Into this congress all the national societies pertaining to horticulture in this country should come. For once, all faction and clannishness should disappear in a grand effort for the common good. The enterprise should be under the management of an independent committee, which, perhaps, should be named by the National Department of Agriculture, or else be made up of one or two representatives of each of our national organizations.

Ohio Experiment Station. C. M. Weed.

The botanists are thinking of a similar movement. A congress of botanists and a congress of horticulturists should have much in common, and one should immediately follow the other. Who will push ?

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WONDERFUL things are coming to the knowledge of the farmer in these later days. New friends, new foes, new facts of cultivation, are coming so rapidly that we can scarcely keep pace with them. And now comes a new line of investigation which appears to open almost a new science. We are no sooner becoming acquainted with the terms bacterium and microbe than we must familiarize ourselves with nematode. Nematode is a term rather loosely used to designate an immense number of minute true worms which live in animal and vegetable tissues. Similar animals are the "eels" in vinegar and the dreaded trichinae in pork.

The nematode worms have been brought into prominent notice during the last few months by investigations upon the root-knot of the peach and other plants, and the clematis disease. As many as seventy-five American cultivated plants are now known to be attacked by these minute and insidious foes. The knotty swellings upon the roots of house-grown tomato plants, by which the crop is often.

In many parts of the world these worms are known to cause some of the worst diseases of plants. We are to expect that further study will reveal still greater and more wide-spread damage. The American literature of the subject is yet meagre. A bulletin by Prof. Scribner, of Tennessee, one by Dr. Neal, of Florida, issued by the Department of Agriculture, another by Professor Atkinson, from the Alabama Station, and a paper presented to the Western New York Horticultural Society, by Professor Comstock, of Cornell, comprise the sum of it. Here is a science which is entirely distinct from insects, fungi or bacteria, and the study of which demands special training.

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TO raise a good crop is not the sum of farming, for farming now-a-days is become a busi ness, and it is governed by the laws of business. Farming is selling as well as raising. The markets are as important as the land. There are ten men who can grow good crops where there is one who can sell them to advantage.

The farmer must study markets, and he must adapt himself to them. There are laws of supply and demand, and there are peculiarities of particular markets, of which the cultivator has no inkling. Breadth of vision characterizes the man who in these times succeeds. We are fond of thinking that the farmers must combine in order to secure higher prices. Combination may reduce carriage and commission, and it may now and then obtain trifling and temporary concessions in prices, but it can never overturn or control the laws of trade. Higher prices are not coming to the farmer. The farmer must improve his methods. Better times do not come to the farmer by combination.

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THE New York Florists* Club is out with a circular asking the members to interest themselves in an exhibition to be held early in November next. This is a move in the right direction, and, as the committee having the matter in charge is composed of truly representative men, full of zeal, and with the best interests of the craft at heart, there is no reason why an exhibition cannot be made that will far surpass those grand affairs formerly held at the Madison Square Garden. We need not discuss the causes of the failure so apparent in the exhibitions held during the last ten years; we merely note the elements of success under the control of the members of the New York Florists' Club, which are more abundant than in any other part of the world. Roses, chrysanthemums, decorative plants, fruits and miscellaneous cut-flowers can be brought together here in sufficient quantities and variety to make an attractive exhibition each by itself, while a combination of the whole, with taste and harmony in their arrangement, would make a display far surpasssing any previously witnessed. Harmony among the exhibitors is the only element needed to make success certain, and of this there is, at present, a superabundance.