CETONIID^ — ROSE-CHAFERS. 49 



these immense numbers, they had so entirely eaten up and 

 destroyed the leaves of the trees, that the whole country, 

 for miles around, though in the middle of summer, was left 

 as bare as in the depth of winter. 



During the unfavorable seasons of the weather, wliich 

 followed this plague, the swine and poultry would watch 

 under the trees for the falling of the beetles, and feed and 

 fatten upon them ; and even the poorer sort of the country 

 people, the country then laboring under a scarcity of pro- 

 vision, had a way of dressing them, and lived ujjon them 

 as food. In 1695, Ireland was again visited with a plague 

 of this same kind.^ 



In Normandy, according to Mouffet, the Cock-chafers 

 make their appearance every third year.^ In It 85, many 

 provinces of France were so ravaged by them, that a pre- 

 mium was offered by the government for the best mode of 

 destroying them.^ During this year, a farmer, near Blois, 

 employed a number of children and the poorer people to 

 destroy the Cock-chafers at the rate of two liards a hun- 

 dred, and in a few days they collected fourteen thousand.* 



The county of Norfolk in England seems occasionally to 

 have suffered much from the ravages of these insects; and 

 Bingley tells us that "about sixty years ago, a farm near 

 Norwich was so infested with them, that the farmer and his 

 servants affirmed they had gathered eighty bushels of them ; 

 and the grubs had done so much injury, that the court of 

 the city, in compassion to the poor fellow's misfortune, al- 

 lowed him twenty-five pounds."^ 



The seeming blunders and stupidity of these insects have 

 long been proverbial, as in the expressions, "blind as a 

 beetle," and "beetle-headed." 



Cetoniidae — Rose-chafers. 



A very pretty species of the Cetoniidae, the Agestrata 

 luconica, is of a fine brilliant metallic green, and found in 



1 Phil. Trans. Abridg., ii. 782. 



2 Shaw, Zool, vi. 25. 



3 Kii'b. and Sp. Introd., i. 179. 



* Anderson's Recr. in Agric, iii. 420. 

 6 Anim. Biog., iii. 233. 



