COLEOPTEEA. 455 



rape- seed, very thickly, which you must then bury by a very deep 

 ploughing, when it is as high as your hand. The colewort, they 

 say, kills the larvae, while it at the same time manures the soil. 

 Or again, you must plough up the land on the approach of hard 

 frosts, to expose the worms to the cold. Lastly, you can water 

 the field with oil of coal, or sprinkle it with ashes of boxwood. 

 All these are expensive. The simplest means are here the best. 

 It is better to depend upon labour than destructive substances, 

 whose employment always presents inconveniences. Considering 

 the difficulties which oppose themselves to us in our search 

 after larvae, we had better collect them in their adult state 

 by violently shaking the branches of the trees on which they 

 doze during the day, and then kill them in some way or other, 

 thus destroying from twenty to forty eggs with each female. A 

 general cockchafer hunt, rendered obligatory by a law, and 

 encouraged by prizes, would be the only efficacious means of 

 opposing a pest which costs agriculture many millions. This 

 means would also be less costly than the turning up of the land 

 concealing the larvae, when it is remembered that they prefer 

 land in full bearing. 



In 1835, the General Council of La Sarthe voted sum of 

 20,000 francs for a cockchafer hunt. Nearly six hundred thousand 

 litres were delivered in, thanks to a prize of three centimes per 

 litre. As a litre contains about five hundred cockchafers, there were 

 thus destroyed about three hundred millions of them. It is true 

 that M. Romieu, then Prefect of La Sarthe, who was the principal 

 promoter of this excellent measure, became food for the wit of the 

 newspapers, and was represented dressed like a cockchafer in 

 the Charivari. Derision and ridicule are too often the reward of 

 useful ideas. In Switzerland were taken, in 1807, more than one 

 hundred and fifty millions of these insects. But these isolated 

 measures were useless in producing a durable result. 



It has been tried to make use of cockchafers in industrial arts. 

 According to M. Farkas, they have succeeded, in Hungary, by 

 boiling them in water, in extracting from them an oil, which is 

 used to grease the wheels of carriages ; and, according to M. Mul- 

 sant, the blackish liquid which is contained in the ossophagus 

 may be used for painting. But the produce arising from these 



