Cockchafer. 275 



appears to be partial to celery trenches (J. R.) ; probably 

 from the loose earth of which they are composed yielding, 

 without much difficulty, to the pressure of its body. 



[ Many of the subterranean larvas which are turned up by 

 the spade or the plough are the imperfect conditions of 

 earth-burrowing beetles, and many of them are among the 

 most insidious pests of the farmer, their ravages being all the 

 more dangerous because they are unseen.] 



The most destructive, perhaps, of the creatures usually 

 called grubs are the larvae of the may-bug or cockchafer 

 (Melolontha vulgaris), but too well known, particularly in the 

 southern and midland districts of England, 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 Scotland, at Sorn, in Ayrshire. 

 (J. R.) 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 Camberwell 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 larva 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. Rose], in order to watch the proceedings, put 

 some females into glasses half^-filled with earth, covered 

 with a tuft of grass and a piece of thin muslin. In a fort- 

 night, 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 following 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 ; 



* Bingley, Anim. Biog., vol. iii. p. 230. 



