THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 115 



In Ontario tlie most familiar of these phytophagous scarabs are the 

 leaf-chafers, popularly known as June bugs. After three years passed in 

 subterranean obscurity the beetles emerge, often in vast quantities ; they 

 are inactive during the day, and remain liidden in the grass at the foot of 

 trees or on the foliage itself, but at dusk they rouse up from their lairs and 

 fly about among the trees in irregular flight, noisy and blundering ; before 

 midnight their activity on the wing ceases. The life of the individual 

 beetle after emerging from the ground lasts little more than a week or two, 

 and you would naturally expect its chief concern to be the perpetuation 

 of its kind. 



But often jMelolonthinus, like Launcelot Gobbo, is a huge feeder, 

 sometimes entirely stripping fruit trees and ornamental shade trees of 

 their foliage. There are one or two genera in this group containing 

 species a good deal smaller than Lac/mosterjia, the true June bug, which 

 are also very destructive in some parts and seasons. The Rose-chafer 

 ( Macrodactylus subspinosus), not content with eating the buds and petals 

 of rose blossoms, frequently attacks the grapevine and the foliage of 

 various fruit trees ; it is also sometimes a pest on young corn ; it does not 

 seem so far to have made its way east of Toronto in any serious numbers. 



A closely-allied genus is the Dichelonycha, one species of which 

 (D. elongata) I have often seen eating the foliage of basswood. Three 

 seasons ago it was very abundant in the woods near Port Hope, and 

 responsible for a good deal of damage done in July to the foliage of forest 

 trees ; it shows a decided preference for basswood, eating its foliage more 

 readily and more rapidly than other leaves, though I have found it on 

 hawthorn and on maple. 



Another genus, that of Hoplia (trifasciata)^ occurs often on hawthorn 

 leaves, but is almost entirely a pollen-feeder, like Trichius piger and 

 Euphoria i?ida. Hoplia^ which occurs often on choke-cherry, early alder 

 and hawthorn, the males appearing at the beginning of May and the 

 females a fortnight later, disappears at the beginning of June. Another 

 species o{ Euphoria, a beautiful beetle called E.fidgida, I suspect of eat- 

 ing forest leaves ; I have picked it up several times under trees in open 

 rocky hardwoods on the north shore of the Rideau. 



Among Scarabs that frequent foliage are also two species very 

 destructive in the tribe Rutelini, large, handsome beetles — Pelidfiota 

 punctata, found on grapevines, and Cotalpa lanigera, chiefly on pear 

 trees, but occasionally on elm, popular and oak. I have never found this 



