2l6 



Marvels of Insect Life. 



to the growers from this cause at twenty mihions of francs. Two years later 

 they were abundant in Saxony, and the authorities offered rewards for their 

 collection, with the result that fifteen hundred tons of the beetles were brought in. 

 Now it was found that an average pound of beetles contained five hundred 

 specimens ; so that the total number thus destroyed was not fewer than fifteen 

 hundred millions of cockchafers. The method of catching them is not to employ 

 entomologists with butterfly nets, but to observe in the evening what trees they 

 are swarming around, and then to go in the early morning with large sheets spread 

 out beneath the branches from which the then sleep}^ beetles may be shaken, 

 shovelled from the sheets into bags, and fastened up. \\'hen dead they can be 

 served up with the food of poultry and pigs ; or with the addition of lime 

 they can be used to fertilize the very fields thev have wasted. 



There is good cause for 

 believing that the chief reason for 

 British immunity from serious 

 attacks of this kind is to be found 

 in our respect for the birds that 

 alone aid us in keeping down the 

 numbers of the chafers. Owls and 

 nightjars account for great num- 

 ber:^ of them at evening, and the 

 latter bird may be seen flying 

 among them with his bill wide 

 agape to admit them. Bats, too, 

 catch them, and nipping off the 

 wings and wing-covers eat the 

 more succulent parts. Starlings 

 may be observed, at the time of 

 the chafers' emergence from the 

 earth, waiting and watching for 

 them to crawl up into daylight, 

 that they may capture and eat 

 them. No doubt, like the thrush 

 listening on the lawn for the earthworm, they can hear the movements 

 of the cockchafer as it pushes through the soil. Rooks and ravens do 

 not wait for the full development of the Insect, but, knowing by some 

 means where the white-grub is at work below, they plunge their bills into the 

 grovmd and drag the bloated grub out. Where the plough can be emplo^/ed on 

 land attacked by them the share turns up great numbers, and it is mainly for 

 these that the ploughman is attended by a crowd of rooks, ravens, jack-daws, and 

 sea-gulls. 



Let it not be assumed as the result of reading the last paragraph that we are 

 entirely free from bad attacks of chafers in this countrw There is a case recorded 

 in some of the entomological books of a farmer near Norwich whose crops suffered 

 so much from the attacks of this beetle that he and his servant gathered eighty 



P>'"to by] [j_ F. Hammond. 



The Cockchafer's Antenna. 

 The remarkable fan-like development of the antenns in these beetles, and 

 the difference between the organs in the two se.\es is made clearer by this 

 photograph, being on the scale of eight times the actual size. Besides 

 being much sm.aUer the female antenna wiU be seen to have one leaf less 

 than that of the male. 



