96 
2. Roots evidently injured or destroyed by perforations, gnawing, bur- 
rowing, decay, or other loss of substance. 
a. Roots eaten away, not burrowed or perforated, and without 
. rotten or withered tips. Tap-root commonly gone or de- 
eayed. White grubs in soil among or beneath the roots. 
THE WHITE GRUBS. 
G ENERA LACHNOSTERNA AND CYCLOCEPHALA. 
(Plate XII., Fig. 1-8; and Plate XUIL., Figs Y and-2.) 
White grubs or “grub worms” are among the immemorial enemies 
of agriculture on both sides of the Atlantic, and in both Europe and 
America the problem presented by their injuries on the farm and in the 
fruit and vegetable garden still calls for throughgoing investigation 
and scientific treatment. In fact, the steady increase of their numbers 
in this State—probably connected with the gradual enlargement of the 
area laid down in grass—has made such an investigation of their life 
histories, habits, and economic relations simply imperative and indis- 
pensable. 
They infest a great variety of plants, nearly all of which have an 
agricultural value, many of them being the ereat staple crops of the 
farm and garden. Grasses of every kind, all the small grains, Indian 
corn, potatoes, beets, and the root crops generally are liable to destruc- 
tion by them, as well as strawberries and young fruit trees, young ever- 
greens, larches, and young forest trees of various kinds. 
Like most other injurious insects of the first class, they are liable 
to great variation and fluctuation of numbers in different localities and 
in successive years, sometimes getting the temporary mastery of a con- 
siderable tract, appropriating nearly its whole growth of vegetation to 
their own use, and then, within a year or two, disappearing from view 
for a time as an injurious agency. Apart from these seemingly spon- 
taneous fluctuations of numbers, they are most likely to cause great 
loss when the crop on ground infested by them is changed by rotation 
from one affording them an abundance of food to one yielding a rela- 
tively scanty erowth—as when grass lands are planted to corn. A num- 
ber of grubs which would produce no visible effect in a dense sward, may 
be sufficient to devour completely a field of young corn. 
They hatch most commonly in grass lands (although frequently 
also in corn), from eggs laid there by various kinds of beetles, all com- 
monly Be res under the general name of “June beetles” or “May 
beetles” or “dor-bugs.” These large, thick, short, snuff-brown beetles, a 
half ich to more than three fourths of an inch in length, nearly as 
thick from above downwards as they are wide, and about half as wide 
as long, are universally known because of their great abundance in May 
and June, during which months they fly at night, filling the air at dusk 
