GOLDEN CHAFER. 25 
in flight on a sunny day they are very conspicuous objects, and, if 
quietly watched, remarkable for the care with which they will choose 
a place (presumably) for egg-laying by floating round in the air till an 
available crack in the ground is selected, and then with good aim 
sweeping down into it and disappearing. 
In the neighbourhood of Isleworth, where Strawberries are grown 
in fields of many acres to supply the London market, I have had the 
beetles brought me in great numbers, and to a greater or lesser extent 
they are a very common infestation ; but the following note, sent me 
on the 25th of May (1895) by Mr. Leonard Micklem, from Yardley 
House, Chingford, Essex, records such an unusually numerous appear- 
ance of this beetle that it is worth adding to former observations :— 
“T am sending you by post three specimens of a green beetle 
which is becoming an insupportable pest in my garden, in the hope you 
may be able to suggest some method of eradicating it. The beetle 
appears annually with the Apple-blossoms, which it devours greedily, 
and is now paying attention to Medlar and Iris-bloom. My gardener 
has killed more than 2000 already this season, but even this appears 
to effect no diminution in their numbers.” 
A few days later Mr. Micklem, writing further regarding the Golden 
Chafer attack, remarked that the capture that day was 373, ‘‘ and this 
in spite of daily destruction since their first appearance.”’ 
The life-history, just shortly given, appears to be that the chafers 
lay their eggs in the ground, including in this such places as heaps of 
rich earth and old cucumber-beds in gardens, and the maggots feed on 
roots, as of grass, &e. Probably also they are very injurious in Straw- 
berry-beds, as John Curtis notes:—‘‘I1 have seen very fine young 
plants die suddenly, and on taking them up, the roots had invariably 
been eaten through close to the surface, and a large maggot was 
always found a little below the spot.’’—(J. C.)* 
The grubs (says the same authority) may be distinguished from 
those of the Cockchafer, which otherwise they very much resemble, by 
being downy, and covered with transverse series of short hairs, and 
the feet are pointed, whereas the feet of the Cockchafer grubs are blunt, 
and rather dilated at the tips. Also the Golden Chafer grubs have a 
large horny bright-coloured rusty spot on each side of the segment 
next the head. 
The grubs are considered to live underground for two or three 
years, and then (in the second week in June, in an instance specially 
watched) to form their pupa-cases in the ground, covering the outside 
of these large earth-cocoons with pellets of earth or dirt which have 
passed through their bodies (see figure 8, p. 28). 
* «Cetonia aurata.’ Paper by Ruricola (—John Curtis) in ‘Gardeners’ 
Chronicle,’ vol. i., page 452, 1841, 
