COLEOPTERA. 



455 



its work. Some reptiles, many carnivorous animals, such as the 

 shrew-mouse, pole-cats, weasels, rats, and certain birds, especially the 

 night-birds, prey upon the cockchafer and its larvae. Ravens and 

 magpies, which are seen going from clod to clod, make savage but 

 insufficient war against them. In fact, all these animals together do 

 not destroy the hundredth part of the cockchafers which are born 

 every year. 



As an example which will show the extent of the evil, a field of 

 29 acres was ploughed up into 72 furrows. At the first ploughing 

 were gathered 300 larvge per furrow ; at the second, 250 ; at the 

 third, 30 more; which amounted to 600 per furrow, and to 43,200 in 

 all. Man, who is the victim of these ravages, has been necessarily 

 obliged to think of a means of destroying this enemy. Many vifalliblc 

 means have been proposed, which have, however, given no result. 

 Prizes have been offered, but the evil has not diminished. Here are 

 a few of the processes recommended. 



Immediately after the ploughing, you must turn into the field 

 infested by the larvae a flock of turkeys, to whom it will be a great 

 treat to devour them, or else you must sow in the field rape-seed, 

 very thickly, which you must then bury by a very deep ploughing, 

 when it is as high as your hand. Colewort, it is said, kills the 

 larvae, while it at the same time manures the soil. Or again, you 

 must plough up the land on the approach of hard frosts, to expose 

 the worms to the cold. Lastly, you can water the field with oil of 

 coal, or sprinkle it with ashes of boxwood. All these are expensive. 

 The simplest means are here the best. It is better to depend upon 

 labour than destructive substances, whose employment always presents 

 inconveniences. Considering the difficulties which oppose themselves 

 to us in our search after larvae, we had better collect them in their 

 adult state by violently shaking the branches of the trees on which 

 they doze during the day, and then kill them in some way or other, 

 thus destroying from twenty to forty eggs with each female. A general 

 cockchafer hunt, rendered obligatory by a law, and encouraged by 

 prizes, would be the only efficacious means of opposing a pest which 

 costs agriculture many millions. This means would also be less 

 costly than the turning up of the land concealing the larvae, when it 

 is remembered that they prefer land in full bearing. 



In 1835 the General Council of La Sarthe voted a sum of 

 20,000 francs for a cockchafer hunt. Nearly 600,000 litres were 

 delivered in, thanks to a prize of three centimes per litre. As a 

 litre contains about 500 cockchafers, there were thus destroyed 

 about 300,000,000 of them. It is true that M. Romieu, then 



