,STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 373 



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CHERRT. LEAVES. 



;^pple trees, which were standing alternately with his plum trees, 

 were not in the least molested. Mr. I. has recently informed me 

 that his trees have never been reinvaded by these beetles since that 

 time. 



These insects are numerous all over our country. In my ov^-n 

 neighborhood they have been common every year, I think, since 

 I first became acquainted with them, more than twenty-five years 

 ago; yet I have here never known the trees to be stripped of their 

 foliage by them, or the turf to be severed by their larvae, although 

 two or three instances of the latter have been related to me as 

 having occurred in this town, and I have several times heard of 

 the same phenomenon in other places. It appears to be a most 

 singular and remarkable circumstance in the economy of these 

 insects, that, while it is their ordinary habit to live dispersed and 

 apart from each other, they at times become gregarious, botli in 

 their larva and their perfect state, multitudes of them assembling 

 together in a flock, and by their conjoined labors utterly devasta 

 ,ting what they attack. Some other insects, however, show this 

 same habit. It is only occasionally that the migratory locust of 

 the east, so renowned in story, congregates together in swarms 

 and flies off to a distance. And instances have occurred in which 

 the common red-legged grasshopper, wliich is scattered al^out the 

 fields of our own country, has done tlie same in yeai'S when it has 

 been unusually abundant. 



The history of oui* May beetle and its transformations have 

 never been fully observed, but everything known respecting it 

 concurs to show that it is exactly analogous to the cockchatfer or 

 /May bug of Europe, {Polyphylla Melolontha^ Linn.,) and occupies 

 ^the place of that species upon this continent. The grubs of that 

 insect are about five years in obtaining their growth. The beetles 

 pair soon after they come from the ground, and tlie male lives but 

 a few days. The female crawls back into the ground and tliere 

 drops her eggs, which are nearly a liundred in number, after 

 which she again emerges, and being now decrepit with age, slie 

 feeds but little and dit'S in a sliort time. 



Among the natural destroyers of our May beetle is the skunk, 

 whose food appears to consist of these insects almost entirely, 

 during the short ])eriod of tlieir existence. Some cats will also 



