Nature's Militia 277 



regarded, perhaps, as the farmer's three worst enemies — 

 cockchafers, daddy-long-legs, and click-beetles or skip- 

 jacks. It is in the grub state that most insects are chiefly 

 mischievous, for this is their grand eating-time; eating is 

 then their sole business, and they eat for their whole lives. 

 For when they get their wings they usually want so little 

 food, and that of such a kind that no one can grudge it 

 them. A caterpillar eats leaves, for instance, and devours 

 them greedily, whereas a butterfly takes but a sip of nec- 

 tar, the loss of which is no injury to even the most delicate 

 flower. Yet as the winged insects lay multitudes of eggs, 

 they cannot be called harmless, and some few of them 

 even do a good deal of eating on their own account. 

 Cockchafers, for example, eat leaves, and sometimes strip 

 whole woods, while their grubs devour roots. Daddy- 

 long-leg grubs (turnip-fly) are equally destructive, and so 

 terribly hardy that they thoroughly deserve their name 

 of leather-jackets, for they are very little affected by 

 weather, and may be frozen stiff, or lie under water for 

 a couple of days, and yet be just as lively as ever after- 

 wards. Insects, indeed, often take a great deal of killing, 

 and will live through frosts, especially in the chrysalis- 

 state, when the poor birds perish by hundreds. 



As for the grub of the click-beetle, its very name is 

 enough to make a farmer shudder, for, as the wire-worm, 

 it is only too well known. For five whole years it remains 

 a grub, eating all the time. And it will eat almost any- 

 thing in the way of vegetable food, turnips as well as 

 sprouting corn, or hops, and grass-roots as well as any of 

 these. Where the young corn is strong, it will sometimes 

 recover from having its first shoot eaten off" just below the 

 ground, and will even send up two or three shoots instead 



