Once established, this disease is very difficult to cure. Syringing with solution of sulphuretted potash, or of sulphur boiled in lime water, will sometimes stop it, but too frequently the disease runs its course to the bitter end. If you uproot the plant and examine its bulb and root, you will find both quite healthy-looking. There is another disease which, though not so devastating to the lily garden as the last, is yet very exasperating and even more fatal in its results. Here is a beautiful strong growing _Lilium Auratum_, eight feet high, just showing its flower buds, and showing a large series of beautiful glossy leaves. Next week we notice that the lower two or three leaves are yellow and withered. Every day more and more leaves die, and eventually what was once a beautiful plant is now a naked stalk with a girdle of fallen yellow leaves and buds around it. Dig up the plant and examine its bulb and roots. The base of the bulb is gone! And its place is taken by a mass of evil-smelling pulp. Swarms of little thread-like worms will be seen twisting about all over the diseased portion. It seems natural to think that these worms are the cause of the evil, but we do not think that this is so. The worms are the result, not the cause of the disease. [Illustration: _Lilium Hookeri._] _Lilium Auratum_ and _L. Speciosum_ are the two lilies which mainly suffer from this disease, but other kinds are occasionally attacked. When once manifest, no treatment has any effect. Take up the plant as soon as you are certain that this disease has started, thoroughly wash the bulb in water, and let it soak in lime water for three days. Then thickly cover with powdered charcoal, and replant. If you do this the bulb may recover, and send up a good spike of blossoms next year. If you have bought good bulbs, and have planted them as we directed last month, you need not fear that you will lose many plants from this disease. Of one hundred and six lilies which we had in pots this year we have only lost one from this cause. Yet another disease to irritate and discourage the lily grower! Look at this _Lilium Humboldti_. Its leaves are well developed, and it already shows five flower-buds, but on closer observation you will see that the stalks which support these buds are black and withered. Or see this _L. Martagon_, which shows a head of twenty blossoms. Touch these blossoms, or gently shake the stem, and five or six buds drop off! These buds, you will observe, have a black rotten base! [Illustration: _Lilium Roseum._]