THE COMMON ROSE-CHAFER. 35 



or light red. The males are sometimes entirely black, and 

 this variety seems to be the beetle called atrata, by Fabricius. 

 The males measure nearly, and the females rather more than 

 seven twentieths of an inch in length. In the year 1825, 

 these insects appeared on the grape-vines in a garden in this 

 vicinity ; they have since established themselves on the spot, 

 and have so much multiplied in subsequent years as to prove 

 exceedingly hurtful to the vines. In many other gardens 

 they have also appeared, having probably found the leaves of 

 the cultivated grape-vine more to their taste than their natu- 

 ral food. Should these beetles increase in numbers, they will 

 be found as difficult to check and extirpate as the destructive 

 vine-chafers of Europe. 



The rose-chafer, or rose-bug, as it is more commonly and 

 incorrectly called, is also a diurnal insect. It is the Fjg 16 

 Melolontha subspinosa (Fig. 16) of Fabricius, by 

 whom it was first described, and belongs to the 

 modern genus Macrodactylus of Latreille. Common 

 as this insect is in the vicinity of Boston, it is, or 

 was a few years ago, unknown in the northern and 

 western parts of Massachusetts, in New Hampshire, and in 

 Maine. It may, therefore, be well to give a brief description 

 of it. This beetle measures seven twentieths of an inch in 

 length. Its body is slender, tapers before and behind, and 

 is entirely covered with very short and close ashen-yellow 

 down ; the thorax is long and narrow, angularly widened in 

 the middle of each side, which suggested the name gubspi- 

 nosa, or somewhat spined ; the legs are slender, and of a 

 pale red color : the joints of the feet are tipped with black, 

 and are very long, which caused Latreille to call the genus 

 Macrodactylu*', that is, long toe, or long foot. 



The natural history of the rose-chafer, one of the greatest 

 scourges with which our gardens and nurseries have been 

 afflicted, was for a long time involved in mystery, but is at 

 last fully cleared up.* The prevalence of this insect on the 



* See my Essay in the Massachusetts Agricultural Repository and Journal, 



Fig. 16. 

 \) 



ft 



