COCKCHAFER. 207 



triangular white spots on each side, and gradually terminating in a broad, 

 elongated, pointed tail ; antennas with 10 joints, the laminae 7 -jointed and 

 feathery on <$ , but 6-jointed, smaller, and narrower on ? . The full- 

 grown larva or grub is 1| to 2 in. long, thick, fleshy, dirty-white, the 

 tail - end swollen, darker in colour, and generally bluish from the 

 excrement showing through. It has a thick, yellow-brown head, strong 

 biting jaws, and 6 long feet attached to the thorax. The pupa is 

 brownish-yellow, with two horny processes on the last abdominal segment. 

 The bettle flies in May and June. After pairing the 9 seeks open 

 spaces with loose soil, and lays in some 70 creamy- white eggs about the 

 size of hemp-seed, in clusters of 10 to 30 at a depth of 2 in. or more below 

 the surface, then reascends and soon dies. The grubs hatch out nearly 

 4 weeks later, and during the first year feed on grass-roots, decomposing 

 foliage, &c. In autumn they burrow deeper, but reascend nearer the 

 surface in spring and feed on the roots of plants until autumn, when they 

 again hibernate, and reascend in the third spring to once more feed as 

 grubs on the roots of young plants ; and the nearly full-grown grubs then 

 do most damage. Again (for the third time) they hibernate as grubs 

 after burrowing deep into the soil, and in spring reascend and feed for a 

 short time. In June, three years after hatching out, they burrow deep 

 into the soil and pupate in an oval hole with smooth hard walls, and after 

 4 to 8 weeks of pupal rest the beetle comes out soft and white, but 

 gradually hardens and deepens in colour. Without coming to the surface 

 it hibernates below ground, and only emerges in the following May from 

 a hole such as is made with the point of a walking-stick. In Britain four 

 years are needed for normal generation (though in warm countries 

 generation takes three years only), and swarms therefore reappear every 

 four years, only stragglers being seen in the intervening years. Ex- 

 termination. So far as practicable, the 9 should be given no favour- 

 able opportunity of laying eggs on blank spaces with loose soil when 

 chafer-years are expected ; and dibbling is then preferable to pit-planting 

 on sandy soil. Where chafers abound, nurseries should not be formed 

 near pastures from which beetles may fly to lay eggs. But the best pro- 

 tection is to hang up nesting-boxes for starlings all round the nursery. 

 Natural remedies fail, however, to check the periodic chafer-years, when 

 the beetles should in the early morning be shaken down from young poles 

 and collected and killed by pouring boiling water over them, or by 

 dipping the sacks full of them into hot water, such collections being 

 made before the beetles begin egg-laying, and simultaneously over the 

 whole area infested. Grubs can only be exterminated in nurseries 

 where noticed by the withering of seedlings attacked, when each grub can 

 be dug up. They can also be trapped with turf-sods about 10 in. broad 

 and 6 or 8 in. thick being laid, grassy side downwards, on the ground ; or 



