ir40 



THE GENESEE FARMER, 



geouons statement (to use as mild a term as the cir- 

 cumstances will allow) made by Dr. Harris, in his 

 Treatise on Injurious Insects, page 28 of the first 

 edition, 26 of the second, where he says the genus 

 Phyllophaga was "proposed by me in 1826. Dk 

 JEAN subsequently called this genus Ancylonycha."' 

 Now, the number of the Massachusetts Jlgricultural 

 Repository in which Dr. Harris' essay appears, (vol. 

 X., pages 1 — 12,) bears the date of July, 1827 ! and 

 tie name Phyllophaga is there merely suggested for 

 this insect and its kindred, without any statement 

 of the marks by which the group can be recognized. 

 In the year 1827, also, a distinguished British ento- 

 mologist, Rev. F. W. Hope, published the first part 

 of his Coleopterisfs Manual, in which this same 

 group is distinctly set apart and clearly character- 

 ized, and the name Lachno-sterna {i. e., hairy-breas.ed) 

 s given it This, name, therefore, is clearly the one 

 which the established rules of scientific nomenclature 

 will give to the genus to which our insect belongs, 

 Dejean's name, mentioned above by Dr. Harris, not 

 having been proposed until some years later. It is 

 tnily painful to meet with such instance s of a lack 

 of candor, which must ever remain as blemishes upon 

 the reputation of one now in his grave, who ha.s done 

 so much to advance this branch of science in our 

 country, and done it so well. Let it impress upon us 

 who come after him the maxim, that, in all cases, 

 " honesty is the best policy." 



This insect has hitherto been generally entered 



«nder the specific name quercina, but Dr. Leconte 



has recently ascertained that nearly ten years before 



his name was given to it, Feohlich, a German natu- 



alist, had in the year 1792 described it, under the 



me of fusca. 



We thus reach the conclusion that Lachnosterna 



usca, a term meaning blackish hairy-breast, is the 



orrect technical came of our common May-beetle, 



which has so often hitherto been called Phyllophaga 



uercina in our agricultural periodicals 



This insect is also frequently termed " horn-bug," 

 being confounded with a larger, perfectly smooth and 

 more flattened beetle, [Lucanus capreolvs, Linn/eus,) 

 which comes out later in the season. It is thus called 

 more particularly, when, like the true horn-bug, it 

 flies in at the open windows of our dwellings upon 

 warm evenings, which both of them frequently do, to 

 tie great annoyance and even terror of the female 

 portion of the household. Neither of these insects, 

 however, can harm our persons; and when they in- 

 trude into my room in this manner, I find the quick- 

 est way to dispose of the pests, is with my fingers to 

 hold their heads in the candle a, moment or two, and 

 then toss them out the window. 



The May-beetle is a very thick-bodied, glos?y in- 

 sect, somewhat less than an inch long and nearly half 

 as broad, varying in color from chestnut-brown to 

 black, its legs of a lighter mahogany-red, and its 

 breast pale and coated over with grayish-yellow hairs. 

 Two or three straight^ elevated linea are also discerni- 

 ble, running lengthwise upon ils wiug-covers. 



Early in spring, in spading or plowing the ground, 

 these beetles are frequently exhumed, or sometimes, 

 in turning over a large stone, one of them will be 

 found beneath, lying in a smooth cavity or little 

 round hollow in the dirt, like a chicken in its shell. 

 This cavity, or cell, is formed by the grub in the pre- 

 eediog autumn. Turning itself around and around, 

 it presses spoB and compacte the dirt aad moulds it 



into this cell, for its winter residence; and in this 

 state it changes first to a pupa, in which the legs and 

 wing-cases of the insect are seen in their rudimentary 

 state, and afterwards to a beetle, such as we have 

 above described. This beetle lies dormant in its cell 

 until the warmth of the incoming summer penetrates 

 the ground sufficiently to awaken it into activity. It 

 then breaks from its prison, and works its way out of 

 the ground. 



These beetles begin to make their appearanoe 

 each year about the first of May, and become most 

 numerous iu the middle of that month. They are 

 sluggish, inactive, and seemingly stupid in their move- 

 ments. They repose during the day-time, hid in the 

 grass, or any other covert which they find. At dusk, 

 they awake and fly about slowly, and with a hum- 

 ming noise, hitting among the leaves of the trees 

 and clinging thereto, and feeding upon them. They 

 are most fond of the leaves of the cherry and plum, 

 which trees they every year injure more or less, and 

 occasionally they congregate in such numbers as to 

 wholly strip them of their foliage, destroying all hopes 

 of any fruit from them that season. An instance of 

 this kind was communicated to me four years since, 

 by MiLO [ngalsbe, Esq., of South Hartford, at thai 

 time President of the Agricultural Society of this 

 (Washington) county. He had seventy plum trees, 

 and a number of cherry trees, of the choicer varieties, 

 which never gave fairer promise of an abundant 

 yield of fruit than at that time. But a swarm of 

 these May-beetles suddenly gathered upon the trees, 

 many of them being then splendidly in bloom, and 

 and iu two nights, the 15th and 16th of May, wholly 

 stripped them of their foliage, so that many of them 

 were as naked as in winter. With their humming 

 noise, these beetles were flying about the trees every 

 evening until about ten o'clock, when they would 

 settle in clusters of ei^ht, ten, twenty or more, and 

 would thus remain until daylight, when they would 

 tumble down from the trees, flying but little, how- 

 ever, and hiding themselves wherever convenient, to 

 st^y through the day. These observations are im- 

 portant, showing that between midnight and daylight 

 is the best time for spreading sheets beneath the 

 trees, to shake and beat these insects into them. In 

 a sub-sequent letter, dated June 29th, Mr. I states 

 that these beetles had then disappeared from all his 

 trees except an Ox-heart cherry, on which about a 

 dozen were found, this being the choicest variety 

 among his cherry trees — indicating that thoagh 

 seemingly such stupid creatures, they are good con- 

 noisseurs in selecting their food. And among his 

 plums, it was the Washington, Jeffei-son, Lawrence, 

 and others of his best kinds, which had been attacked 

 with the greatest avidity. Apple trees, which were 

 standing alternately with his plum trees, were not in 

 the least molested. Meeting Mr. I. a few days ago, 

 I learned that lii.s trees have never been re-invaded 

 by these beetles since that time. 



These insects are numerous all over our country. 

 In my own neighborhood they have been common 

 every year,.I think, since I first became acquainted 

 with them, more than twenty-five years a^o; yet I 

 have here never known the trees to be stripped O'f 

 their foliage by them, or the turf to be severed by 

 their larvs, although two or three instances of the 

 latter have been related to n)e as having occurred in 

 this town, and I have several times heard of the sajoe 

 phenomenon ia other places. It appears to be a 



