176 DESTRUCTIVE INSECTS OF VICTORIA: 



With regard to tlie hatching of the eggs the time is 

 uncertain, although, as Mr. Thiele, one of the leading 

 growers, remarks, the grubs are very small in the month 

 of February, a statement that would naturally lead to the 

 conclusion that the eggs may be deposited in January, or 

 even earlier. 



The beetles usually make their first appearance in 

 November, although climatic and other conditions may 

 cause a change even here. They are most plentiful in 

 December, and may be found until the early part of Feb- 

 ruary. Mr. Thiele also informs me that he first noticed 

 these beetles in his orchard at Doncaster in 1875, though 

 he had seen them at Hawthorn three years earlier. 

 Specimens of the same insect are, however, in the Howitt 

 collection of insects now at the Biological School, Mel- 

 bourne University, which are labelled so far back as 

 1857, so that probably some of the early growers of 

 strawberries had suffered from a pest the nature of which 

 they were unaware. 



In December these insects are reported to do the most 

 mischief, as they destroy both the flower and even the leaf 

 stalks by tunnelling, as shown in Fig. 6, often destroy- 

 ing the whole of the crop of fruit. The most serious 

 damage, however, is done to the plant, which it often kills 

 outright, the larvae eating a large hole in the crown or 

 centre of the plant, see Fig. 5, which soon decays and 

 rots away. 



It will thus be seen that we have to deal with a pest 

 which in two stages of its existence is injurious. In the 

 larval form it destroys the centre of the plant, and in the 

 perfect stage it effectually prevents the plant from bearing 

 either flowers or fruit. 



When strawberry grounds are newly laid down and 

 planted, it is, as a rule, not long before the young plants 

 are found OTit by the beetles, the eggs deposited, and the 

 work of destruction is fairly commenced. 



As to what natural food this insect lived upon before 

 the introduction of strawberries into Victoria we are, un- 

 fortunately, in the dark, but from what we know of a 



