when young, live below ground, and 

 become above-ground flying creatures, 

 when full grown, which have not the 

 carnivorous tastes of the forms we have 

 just mentioned. Many of these species 

 live on the roots of plants and others 

 upon the vegetable mold of rich soils. 

 The large white grubs so often found 

 in the soil of grass lands belong to 

 both of these classes. They are the 

 larvae, or young, of several kinds of 

 the clumsy beetles known as scarabs. 

 The larvae of the common brown May- 

 beetles, for example, are root-feeders, 

 living mainly on grass-roots, and they 

 are sometimes so abundant and de 

 structive as to destroy valuable lawns. 

 The roots are sometimes so uniformly 

 eaten off by these white grubs that the 

 sod may be rolled up like a roll of 

 carpet. The white grubs of the beau 

 tiful large green beetles, known as June- 

 beetles, or fig-eaters, in the South (they 

 do not occur in the more northern 

 states), although they look almost pre 

 cisely like the May-beetle larvae, are 

 not injurious and feed only upon the 

 vegetable mold of the soil. The wire- 

 worms, which are the young of the 

 click-beetles, or " snapping-bugs," feed 

 upon the roots of plants; there are 

 plant lice which live underground and 

 suck the sap from plant roots, like the 

 famous grape-vine phylloxera; there 

 are caterpillars which live almost 

 entirely underground and feed upon 

 living roots; there are maggots which 

 have the same habit; and there are 

 even bark lice or scale insects which 

 live attached to rootlets in the same 

 way that the other species live above 

 ground on the limbs and twigs of trees. 

 Other insects living above ground 

 all their lives hide their eggs under 

 ground. Most grasshoppers, for ex 

 ample, do this, and many of the closely 

 related crickets not only hide their 

 eggs in this way, but live underground 

 themselves in the day time, and come 

 forth at night to feed, or to collect 

 grass leaves, which they carry into 

 their burrows and eat at leisure. Other 

 insects also hide below ground during 

 the day and feed only at night. The 

 full grown May-beetles do this, and 



the cut-worms also. The cut- worms 

 are soft-bodied caterpillars and are 

 greedily eaten by birds and carnivorous 

 insects, so it is essential to'their safety 

 that they conceal themselves as much 

 as possible. There is an interesting 

 cut-worm which occasionally becomes 

 so numerous that it has to migrate in 

 great armies in search of food, and 

 these great masses of caterpillars hurry 

 on, driven by hunger, by day as well as 

 by night, followed by flocks of birds 

 and other enemies until the majority 

 of them are destroyed. This cut-worm 

 is generally called the k 'army worm." 



Other caterpillars, while living above 

 ground and feeding on the leaves of 

 plants, instead of spinning cocoons for 

 their protection when they transform 

 to the helpless chrysalis or pupal con 

 dition, burrow beneath the surface of 

 the ground and there transform with 

 out a cocoon. Hundreds of species do 

 this and sometimes these brown pupae 

 are so abundant that they are turned 

 up in numbers with every spadeful of 

 earth. 



We are now able to say that the in 

 sects found beneath the surface of the 

 earth are as follows: 



1. Insects which live underground 

 during their whole lives, feeding (a) 

 on roots and rootlets; ($) on dead and 

 decaying vegetable matter; (c) on 

 other insects. 



2. Insects which live in the nests of 

 ants. 



3. Insects which have their nests 

 underground, but which get their food 

 elsewhere. 



4. Insects which live underground 

 only in their younger stages of life. 



5. Insects which hide their eggs or 

 pupae underground. 



6. Carnivorous insects, and insects 

 which feed on decaying animal matter, 

 which occasionally burrow under 

 ground in search of food. 



I hope it will be clear from what we 

 have said that insects must take an 

 important part in the changes in the 

 character of the soil which are con 

 stantly going on, quite as important 

 indeed as do the earthworms about 

 which Darwin wrote. 



96 



