48 SECOND REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



of this insect whenever they are brought in contact with them. It 

 should, therefore, be freely used in their haunts underneath base-boards 

 and the floor-joinings adjacent. 



Preventives. — A material which promises to be a preventive of a 

 repetition of the attack, if the insects be once destroyed, is the common 

 roofing-paper prepared with gas-tar. It should be cut in strips of from 

 eighteen inches to two feet in width, and placed underneath the border 

 of the carpet. The odor that would penetrate heavy carpets should 

 not be very disagreeable, and it certainly may be endured if it shall 

 give us immunity from two or more serious carpet pests. Even thick 

 paper or newspapers spread underneath carpets give a certain degree of 

 protection, and none should be laid without such precaution. 



Macrodactylus subspinosus {Fabr.). 



A correspondent, Mrs. Lucy G. Chrisman, writing from Warren Farm, 

 Chrisman, Rockingham Co., Va., gives as the result of her observations 

 upon this insect, the well-known rose-beetle, that its depredations in 

 that region are limited to localities having a sandy soil. Where clay 

 occurs, the insect is not to be found. Should this statement, which, 

 from its detail and accompanying facts, is an interesting one, be con- 

 firmed by observations throughout other sections where it abounds, it 

 will prove to be an important portion of its life-history. It would enable 

 us by devoting our clay soils, so far as it may be practicable, to the cul- 

 ture of the crops that are known to be the favorite food of this pest, to 

 do much toward a mitigation of its ravages. The following is the state- 

 ment: 



Our county is a mixed sandy soil on the rivers, creeks and all the 

 little streams, with clay land in many places between. Nowhere on the 

 clay lands are the rose-bugs ever seen. I have a friend whose land lies 

 on both sides of Cook's creek, and his sons' houses are quite near each 

 other, but upon different sides of the stream; the one never sees a rose- 

 bug; the other is eaten up with them. A mile distant is the town of 

 Bridgewater, on a piece of North river bottom-land. In 1882, I was 

 there in the rose-bug season, and the creatures filled the air so as to 

 make riding exceedingly disagreeable — at times looking almost like a 

 brown cloud — extending down to the water's edge, yet just across the 

 river not one was to be seen. We seemed to have left them at the bridge 

 in crossing. 



A comparative exemption of a clayey district from the presence of 

 this insect might naturally be expected from the difficulty that the 

 female beetle would encounter in digging into the tough soil for the de- 

 posit of its eggs. But that this explanation does not meet the condi- 

 tions as above given by our correspondent, appears from the statement 



