34 The Strawberry Book. 



CHAPTER VI. 



ON INSECT ENEMIES. 



THE insect enemies of the strawberry are few in num- 

 ber, but some of them are very malevolent and destruc- 

 tive. Chief among them I place the larva of the May 

 beetle, or dor-bug, Phyllophaga Quercina, whose rav- 

 ages are sometimes most disheartening. This, sometimes 

 known as the white grub, and sometimes incorrectly 

 called by farmers the potato worm, but not to be con- 

 founded with the true potato worm, which is the larva of 

 a sphinx, is about an inch and a half long, three eighths 

 of an inch in diameter, with a brownish-red head. It is 

 occasionally found in ordinary garden soil, and its pres- 

 ence is made known by the leaves of a strawberry vine 

 wilting down, when on pulling it gently the whole plant 

 comes up, the root being eaten completely off. But it 

 abounds in old grass land and pastures. 



Vines planted on such land recently ploughed will in 

 one case out of a hundred thrive and do well, but the 

 chances are, that every one will be killed by the white 

 grub. I manured thoroughly and ploughed up last spring 

 a little more than an acre of pasture land, and set out upon 

 it about twenty thousand choice strawberry plants, a large 

 percentage of them being of the President Wilder variety. 

 The vines took root and began to grow, and some of them 

 had begun to send out runners, when the grub attacked 

 them, and made clean work of the whole field, devouring 

 almost every plant. The field was kept clean by constant 

 hoeing, and I attempted to dig out the grubs, as some of 



