THE BEETLE. 



543 



like most other insects, that the instant they 

 become flies are arrived at their state of full 

 perfection, the May-bug continues feeble and 

 sickly. Its colour is much brighter than in 

 the perfect animal, all its parts are soft, and 

 its voracious nature seems, for a while, to have 

 entirely forsaken it. As the animal is very 

 often found in this state, it is supposed, by 

 those unacquainted with its real history, that 

 the old ones of the former season have buried 

 themselves for the winter, in order to revisit 

 the sun the ensuing summer. But the fact is, 

 the old one never survives the season, but dies, 

 like all the other winged tribe of insects, from 

 the severity of cold in winter. 



About the latter end of May, these insects, 

 after having lived for four years under ground, 

 burst from the earth, when the first mild even- 

 ing invites them abroad. They are at that 

 time seen rising from their long imprisonment, 

 from living only upon roots, and imbibing 

 only the moisture of the earth, to visit the 

 mildness of the summer air, to choose the 

 sweetest vegetables for their banquet, and to 

 drink the dew of the evening. Wherever 

 an attentive observer then walks abroad, he 

 will see them bursting up before him in his 

 pathway, like ghosts on a theatre. He will 

 see every part of the earth, that had its sur- 

 face beat into hardness, perforated by their 

 egression. When the season is favourable 

 for them, they are seen by myriads buzzing 

 along, hitting against every object that inter- 

 cepts their flight. The mid-day sun, how- 

 ever, seems too powerful for their constitutions; 

 they then lurk under the leaves and branches 

 of some shady tree ; but the willow seems par- 

 ticularly their most favourite food ; there they 

 lurk in clusters, and seldom quit the tree till 

 they have devoured all its verdure. In those 

 seasons which are favourable to their propaga- 

 tion, they are seen in an evening as thick as 

 flakes of snow, and hitting against every ob- 

 ject with a sort of capricious blindness. Their 

 duration, however, is but short, as they never 

 survive the season. They begin to join shortly- 

 after they have been let loose from their prison, 

 and when the female is impregnated, she cau- 

 tiously bores a hole in the ground, with an in- 

 strument fitted for that purpose, which she is 

 furnished with at the tail, and there deposits 

 her eggs, generally to the number of three- 

 score. If the season and the soil be adapted 

 to their propagation, these soon multiply as 

 already described, and go through the noxious 

 stages of their contemptible existence. This 

 insect, however, in its worm state, though pre- 

 judicial to man, makes one of the chief repasts 

 of the feathered tribe, and is generally the 

 first nourishment with which they supply their 

 young. Rooks arid hogs are particularly fond 

 of these worms, and devour them in great 



numbers. The inhabitants of the county of 

 Norfolk, some time since, went into the prac- 

 tice of destroying their rookeries, but in pro- 

 portion as they destroyed one plague, they 

 were pestered with a greater; and these insects 

 multiplied in such an amazing abundance, as 

 to destroy not only the verdure of the fields, 

 but even the roots of vegetables not yet shot 

 forth. One farm in particular was so injured 

 by them in the year 1751, that the occupier 

 was not able to pay his rent, and the landlord 

 was content not only to lose his income for that 

 year, but also gave money for the support of 

 the farmer and his family. In Ireland they 

 suffered so much by these insects, that they 

 came to a resolution of setting fire to a wood of 

 some miles in extent, to prevent their mischie- 

 vous propagation. 1 



1 Grubs. We frequently, (says Mr Rennie, in his in- 

 teresting work on Insect Transformations,) hear farmers 

 and gardeners complaining that their produce is de- 

 stroyed by " the grub ;" they might with equal propriety 

 accuse " the bird " when their ripe seeds are devoured 

 by sparrows, chaffinches, linnets, and other seed-eaters. 

 Instead of one sort of grub, as the expression seems to 

 indicate, we are far under the mark in reckoning a thou- 

 sand species indigenous to Britain, each peculiar in its 

 food and its manners. We shall, however, adhere as 

 nearly as possible to the terms in common use ; but as the 

 larvaB of the crane-flies (Tipulidae Leach), being without 

 legs, cannot be accurately ranked with the legged grubs 

 of beetles, we shall consider them as maggots, though 

 they are usually termed grubs by the farmers. 



The most destructive, perhaps, of the creatures usu- 

 ally called grubs, are the larvre of the may-bug or cock- 

 chafer (Melolontha vulgaris), but too well known, par- 

 ticularly in the southern and midland districts of Eng- 

 land, as well as in Ireland, where the grub is called the 

 Connaught worm ; but fortunately not abundant in the 

 north. We only once met with the cockchafer in Scot- 

 land, at Sorn, in Ayrshire. Even in the perfect state, 

 this insect is not a little destructive to the leaves of both 

 forest and fruit trees. In 1823, we remember to have 

 observed almost all the trees about Dulwich and Camber- 

 well defoliated by them ; and Salisbury says, the leaves 

 of the oaks in Richmond Park were so eaten by them, 

 that scarcely an entire leaf was left. But it is in their 

 previous larvae state that they are most destructive, as we 

 shall see by tracing their history. 



The mother cockchafer, when about to lay her eggs, 

 digs into the earth of a meadow or corn-field to the depth 

 of a span, and deposits them in a cluster at the bottom of 

 the excavation. Rb'sel, in order to watch their proceed- 

 ings, put some females into glasses half-filled with earth, 

 covered with a tuft of grass, and a piece of thin muslin. 

 In a fortnight, he found some hundreds of eggs deposited, 

 of an oval shape and a pale yellow colour. Placing the 

 glass in a cellar, the eggs were hatched towards autumn, 

 and the grubs increased remarkably in size. In the fol- 

 lowing May they fed so voraciously that they required a 

 fresh turf every second day; and even this proving too 

 scanty provender, he sowed in several garden pots a crop 

 of peas, lentils, and salad, and when the plants came up, 

 he put a pair of grubs in each pot ; and in this manner 

 he fed them through the second and third years. During 

 this period, they cast their skins three or four times, 

 going for this purpose deeper into the earth, and burrow- 

 ing out a hole where they might effect their change 

 undisturbed; and they do the same in winter, during 

 which they become torpid and do not eat. 



