230 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



mentioned that one-third of the fenced-in camp, or about 40,000 

 acres, might be estimated as having the grass destroyed by injury 

 at the roots. In another report sent somewhat later, bearing 

 date March 21st, 1894, it is mentioned that nearly half the 

 "camp" must have suffered. 



The reports noted, amongst other points, "Every year we 

 have a good crop of beetles, which at certain seasons you find 

 travelling along the cattle-tracks in hundreds ; it appears to be 

 from their eggs that the white grub comes, and a dry season 

 seems to favour their growth. They select the higher lands, 

 where they have literally dug up the earth, leaving it as loose as 

 if a spade had been used. They work within a couple of inches 

 of the surface, eating the roots of all the grass they find, so the 

 pasture withers away and dies out, leaving the ground as if it 

 had been hoed." 



"Later on," it is mentioned, the grub "turns into a kind of 

 horned beetle, thousands of which appear on the surface, and 

 coming out of the ground where the grub was numerous leads to 

 the belief that the one develops into the other." 



The grubs, of which specimens were sent me, ranging in size 

 from about a quarter-grown, to an inch and a half, the greatest 

 length named in the written communication, were obviously 

 larvfe of some Lamellicorn beetles, fleshy, cylindrical, with reddish 

 head, a pair of rather long hairy legs on each of the segments 

 next the head, and the caudal extremity blunt and enlarged. 



Of the beetles sent me all the collection (with tbe exception 

 of two specimens) proved to be males and females of the " horned 

 beetle" mentioned as coming up by "thousands" out of the 

 grub-ravaged pasture ground, and this on examination proved to 

 be the Dilohoderus ahderus, Sturm.* Of these the males are 

 thick-made, oval beetles, about ten lines long, and five and a half 

 across, black, with a kind of grey hoariness ; the head furnished 

 with a long, pointed, curved-back horn, and the thorax with a 

 short, thick, and broad horn-like process, bifid at the extremity 

 and pointing forward, and furnished on the under side with a 

 short thick yellow silky fringe. The females are distinguishable 

 by the absence of the horns. 



The accompanying figure, drawn from the specimens sent, 

 gives a very fair idea of the appearance of these beetles, and also 

 of the Lamellicorn larvse, of which specimens were sent from tbe 

 infested ground. 



Here, however, a point occurs of very considerable agricultural 

 importance, and which possibly the presence of the other beetles 

 sent may throw some light on. It is noted in the reports sent 

 over, that where this wide-spread grub-destruction of pasturage 



■''■ For identification of these beetles and of the two other species named, 

 as well as for copies of the original descriptions, I am indebted to Mr. Oliver 

 E. Janson, F.E.S. 



