MAY BEETLE OR DOR-BUG. 69 



James Cruickshanks agreed with C. M. Hovey that we must rel}' 

 on suckers to renew the bush. Old wood bears poor fruit. He had 

 a plantation in tree fonn, where every bush was killed by the borer 

 before they were three or four years old, and he could find no 

 remed3\ 



C. M. Atkinson remarked that in Europe currants are always 

 grown on single stems. He had been troubled with a black beetle 

 on his potatoes, which moved by hopping, and bored holes in the 

 leaf. They swept away the whole of one piece of potatoes. He 

 had driven them away by sowing coal ashes over them. He had 

 found a handful of coal ashes, dropped on the spot where a cabbage 

 plant was to be set out, a preventive of club foot and cut- worms. 



H. W. Fuller spoke of the grub of the cockchafer or May beetle, 

 which is so destructive to the roots of grass, and whose ravages he 

 had observed on the lawns at "Woodlawn Cemetery and at Alvin 

 Adams' estate in Watertown. The history of its life is very curious ; 

 the beetle deposits an egg in the ground, from which a soft, white 

 grub is hatched which grows for three j^ears, and cuts off all the fine 

 fibrous roots of the grass so that the sod can be lifted from the earth 

 like a carpet. The third or foiu'th j-ear it goes down eighteen 

 inches into the ground, and comes out a light colored beetle, which 

 soon grows darker and flies away to repeat its operations. He had 

 found them by hundreds under the turf on the edge of the dead spot 

 in the grass. Thej^ are distinct from a similar worm, much resem- 

 bling them, found in manure heaps. He spread a liberal suppty of 

 nitrate of soda on the lawn with good effect, as he thought, the lawn 

 during the next summer not being much troubled by them. He 

 regarded potash, or any good alkali, as the most practical remedy 

 in the case. 



Mr. Atkinson said that j'ear before last he apphed what coal 

 ashes he had on hand to his lawns, and rolled with a heavy roller, 

 with good effect in destroying these grubs. He thought it more due 

 to the ashes than to the roller. 



Mr. Mann said that the use of the roller was one of the most 

 approved ways of destroying these insects ; he thought it more 

 effectual in this case than the ashes. Mr. Fuller was right in regard 

 to the larva of the dor-bug growing three years in the ground, but 

 they are not destructive the first year. Dor-bugs are very abundant 

 in some years, and not in others, and in au}^ given case it would be 

 the same three years later. 



