14 
The grapevine flea-beetle is sometimes erroneously called thrips. 
It occurs throughout the United States and Canada, the time of 
its appearance varying with the latitude, and possibly being double- 
brooded in the South. It is often abundant on wild vines, and also 
occurs on the alder. In the spring it is, perhaps, the subject of more 
frequent complaint than any other grape insect. 
The damage to the buds is most to be feared and the hardest to 
prevent. A very strong arsenical wash, say, 1 pound to 50 gallons of 
water, with lime, applied before or as soon as the beetles appear, will, 
perhaps, afford protection. Mr. Howard has found also that the beetles 
at this season may be successfully jarred into cloth collecting frames 
placed about the vines as recommended for the rose-chafer, and that 
if the cloth is saturated with kerosene, the beetles striking it will soon 
perish. Later in the season the beetles and larve on the foliage may 
be reached by an arsenical spray of the customary strength, viz, 1 
pound of the poison to 150 gallons of water. 
THE ROSE-CHAFER. 
(Macrodactylus subspinosus Fabr.) 
With the blooming of the grape, an awkward, long-legged, light- 
brown beetle about one-third of an inch in length frequently appears 
in enormous swarms, at first devouring the blossoms, then the leaves, 
reducing them frequently to mere skeletons, and later attacking the 
young fruit. By the end of July these unwelcome visitors disappear 
as suddenly as they come. 
Though now distinctively a grape pest, it was first known as an 
enemy of the rose, whence its name, ‘‘rose-bug,” or rose-chafer. It 
attacks also the blossoms of all other fruit trees and of many orna- 
mental trees and shrubs, and, in fact, in periods of great abundance, 
stops at nothing—garden vegetables, grasses, cereals, or any green 
thing. At such times plants appear a living mass of sprawling beetles 
clustering on every leaf, blossom, or fruit. 
The rose-chafer occurs from Canada southward to Virginia and 
Tennessee, and westward to Colorado, but is particularly destructive 
in the eastern and central portions of its range, notably in New Jersey, 
Delaware, and to a less extent in New England and the Central States. 
It passes its early stages in grass or meadow land, especially if 
sandy—the larvee feeding on the roots of grasses a few inches below 
the surface of the ground like the common white grub, which they 
closely resemble except in size. The eggs are laid in the ground in 
June and July, and the larvee become full grown by autumn and trans- 
form to pupe the following spring, from two to four weeks prior to the 
emergence of the beetles. 
Remedies.—The rose-chafer is a most difficult insect to control or 
destroy, and the enormous swarms in which it sometimes appears 
make the killing of a few thousand or even millions of little practical 
