388 RAVAGES OF INSECTS. 



grubs of beetles, we shall consider them as maggots, though 

 they are usually termed grubs by the farmers. 



The most destructive, pei'haps, of the creatures usually 

 called grubs, are the larvae of the may-bug or cockchafer 

 (^Melolontha vulgaris), but too well known, particularly in the 

 southern and midland districts of England, as well as in 

 Ireland, where the grub is called the Connaught worm ;* 

 but fortunately not abundant in the north. AA'e only once 

 met with the cockchafer in Scotland, at Sorn, in Aja-shire. 

 (J. E.) Even in the perfect state, this insect is not a little 

 destructive to the leaves of both forest and fruit trees. In 

 1823, we remember to have observed almost all the trees 

 about Dulwich and Camberwell defoliated by them; and 

 Salisbury says, the leaves of the oaks in Eichmond Park 

 were so eaten by them, that scarcely an entire leaf was 

 left. But it is in their previous larva state that they are 

 most destructive, as we shall see by tracing their history. 



The mother cockchafer, when about to lay her eggs, digs 

 into the earth of a meadow or corn-field to the depth of a 

 span, and deposits them in a cluster at the bottom of the 

 excavation. Eosel, in order to watch the proceedings, put 

 some females into glasses half-filled with earth, covered 

 with a tuft of grass and a piece of thin muslin. In a fort- 

 night, he found some hundreds of eggs deposited, of an 

 oval shape and a pale-yellow colour. Placing the glass in 

 a cellar, the eggs were hatched towards autumn, and the 

 grubs increased remai-kably in size. In the following May 

 they fed so voraciously that they required a fresh turf every 

 second day ; and even this proving too scanty provender, 

 he sowed in several garden pots a crop of peas, lentils, and 

 salad, and when the plants came up he put a pair of grubs 

 in each j)ot ; and in this manner he fed them through the 

 second and third years. During this jDcriod, they cast 

 their skins three or four times, going for this purpose 

 deeper into the earth, and burrowing out a hole where they 

 might effect their change undisturbed; and they do the 

 same in winter, during which they become torpid and do 

 not eat. 



* Bingley, Anim. Biog., vol. ill. p. 230. 



