RAVAGERS OF CROPS 253 



" Barbot, vole, vole, vole, 

 Ton pere est h I'e'cole, 

 Qui m'a dit, si tu ne voles, 



II te coupera la gorge 

 Avec un grand couteau de Saint- George." 



The two most historic appearances of vast 

 swarms of Cockchafers in the British Isles 

 occurred in 1574, when their corpses clogged 

 and stopped the mill-wheels on the Severn ; and 

 again in 1688, when they appeared in county 

 Galway is such swarms as to cause a famine. 

 On the Continent, the visits of these all-devour- 

 ing hosts have been of much more frequent occur- 

 rence. In the summer of 1804, great quantities of 

 these Cockchafers were blown by a gale of wind 

 into the Lake of Zurich, so that a thick bank of 

 their decomposing bodies was heaped up upon 

 the shore, and caused from its putrid exhalation 

 a serious outbreak of illness. On the i8th of May, 

 1832, it is recorded that a great cloud of Cock- 

 chafers in full flight arrested the progress of the 

 diligence on the road between Gournay and 

 Gisors, the horses being so terrified that the 

 driver was obliged to turn back. M. Mulsant, 

 in his " Monographic des Lamellicornes de la 

 France," relates how the streets of Macon were, 

 in the month of May, 1841, invaded by so 

 numerous a host of Cockchafers that the insects 

 were shovelled up with spades, while they 

 swarmed in the vineyards of the Maconnais, 

 doing most serious damage to the foliage. 



One of our worst agricultural foes is the so- 

 called " Wireworm," the larval stage of a small 

 oblong beetle, variously known as the Click or 



