30 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. 



which it devours. During the same period, these chafers may 

 be seen in still greater numbers on various kinds of sumach, 

 which they often completely despoil of their leaves. They are 

 of a broad oval shape, and very variable in color. The head 

 and thorax of the male are gi'cenish black, margined with dull 

 ochre or tile-red, and thickly punctured; the wing-covers are 

 clay-yellow, irregularly furrowed, and punctured in the furrows ; 

 the legs are pale red, brown, or black. The thorax of the female 

 is clay-yellow, or tile-red, sometimes with two oblique blackish 

 spots on the top, and sometimes almost entirely black; the 

 wing-covers resemble those of the male ; the legs are clay- 

 yelloM^, or light red. The males are sometimes entirely black, 

 and this variety seems to be the beetle called atrata, by Fa- 

 bricius. The males measure nearly, and the females rather 

 more than seven twentieths of an inch in length. In the year 

 1825, these insects appeared on the grape-vines in a garden in 

 this vicinity ; they have since established themselves on the 

 spot, and have so much multiplied in subsequent years as to 

 prove exceedingly hurtful to the vines. In many other gardens 

 they have also appeared, having probably found the leaves of 

 the cultivated grape-vine more to their taste than their natural 

 food. Should these beetles increase in numbers, they will be 

 found as difficult to check and extirpate as the destructive 

 vine-chafers of Europe. 



The rose-chafer, or rose-bug, as it is more commonly and 

 incorrectly called, is also a diurnal insect. It is the Melolontha 

 subspinosa of Fabricius, by whom it was first described, and 

 belongs to the modern genus Macrodactyhis of LatreiUe. 

 Common as this insect is in the vicinity of Boston, it is, or 

 was a few years ago, unknown in the northern and western 

 parts of Massachusetts, in New Hampshire, and in Maine. 

 It may, therefore, be well to give a brief description of it. 

 This beetle measures seven twentieths of an inch in length. 

 Its body is slender, tapers before and behind, and is entuely 

 covered with very short and close ashen yellow down ; the 

 thorax is long and narrow, angularly widened in the middle of 

 each side, which suggested the name subspinosa, or somewhat 

 spined; the legs are slender, and of a pale red color; the joints 



