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WIRE WORM. 407 



The various species of spring beetles, Fig. 153, 

 are seen in June, and not infrequently fly into our 

 rooms. Their long, slim form, usually brown color, 

 and especially their habit of springing when placed 

 on their back, which is effected by a sort of ventral 

 spring pole arrangement, give ready means to iden- 

 tify the beetles. The long, cylindri- 



. FIG. 154. cal grubs, Fig. 154, with their six 



jointed thoracic feet, are also hard to mistake. Indeed the name 

 wire worms is very appropriate. 



As in case of white grubs the eggs are laid in meadows and 

 pastures about the roots of grasses, where for three years the 

 slender grubs eat and grow. "While complaint is not usually made 

 of injury to grass, yet such injury must be common and exten- 

 sive. The grass blades are so countless that though numerous 

 plants are killed they are not missed; but let the sward be 

 plowed, and the second year plant corn, or sow oats or wheat, 

 and if the wire worms are present they are now rapidly ap- 

 proaching maturity they often do incalculable damage, ruining, 

 it may be, whole fields of grain. That they do not more injury 

 the first year after plowing is not so strange. It is the habit of 

 the grubs of this family of beetles to eat rotten or decaying 

 wood, etc., and so it is quite likely that these wire worms, with 

 changed habits, really prefer a diet of decaying roots for a 

 change, especially as it may the better satisfy the cravings of the 

 old time inherited appetite. With the exception of buckwheat, 

 peas and beans, there is hardly a crop but what is levied upon 

 by these insatiable wire worms. The only recommendation that 

 our present knowledge offers to resist these terrible pests is 

 either to summer fallow for one one year in hopes to starve the 

 grubs, or else to sow some crop that is distasteful to them the 

 second year after plowing the green sward. 



