TEE COCKCHAFER. 



The MELOLONTHIX^E are excessively numerous both in generic forms and in species, varying in 

 size from a length of one-eighth of an inch to four inches. They are seldom of glossy metallic colours, 

 the prevailing style of their livery being an integument of modest brown, coated with minute scales 

 of white or grey, but sometimes of silvery or golden hue. Their organs of mastication are feebly 

 developed, the mandibles being small, partly membranous, and not visible beyond the edge of the 

 clypeus. The legs are long, with the hind tarsi formed of slender joints, and the claws, when both are 

 present, as a rule divergent and toothed in the middle. Among the more remarkable subordinate 

 groups of the sub-family we may mention first the Hoplides, small, compactly-bnilt insects, with rich 

 blue or silvery scale-clothing, distinguished by the more robust tarsi and the long unequal claws, very 

 often reduced to a single claw curved like a grappling-hook. These are leaf and floral Beetles, 

 of nimble flight, found in nearly all tropical and temperate regions, but nowhere in much abundance 

 or variety except in South Africa, where some 300 species are met with, so varied in 

 structure that no fewer than twenty-four genera have been found necessary for their classification. 

 They are restricted to the southern extremity of the continent, comparatively few being found in the 

 warmer district of Natal farther north, and, in short, they are the associates of the equally rich and 

 peculiar flora of heaths and lilies of the Cape Colony. Another group, the Sericides, the most slenderly- 

 formed of all the Melolonthinae, of which we have two species in England, are copiously represented in 

 Australia, where a numerous genus of gilded Chafers occurs, having a cleft clypeus, named Diphucepluda. 

 In America, North and South, the prevailing group are the Macrodactylides, elegantly-formed Beetles, 



with remarkably long and slender legs and feet, which are seen hovering in swarms over sweet-smelling 



flowers in open places on forest borders; a North American species feeds on the petals of roses. 



The typical group, Melolonthides, which includes the 



common Cockchafer and Midsummer-chafer (Rhizo- 



troijus solstitialis), is feebly represented in South 



America, Australia, and Africa south of the Sahara ; 



but is rich in large and handsome species in the 



north temperate zone, in tropical Asia, and Mada- 

 gascar. To this group belongs a series of species 



in which the leaflets of the antennae are increased 



in number and developed to an enormous length, 



especially in the males. One of the best known is 



Polyphylla fullo, a common insect in France, twice 



the size of the Cockchafer, and prettily variegated 



with marble-like markings of a chalky-white colour. 



In some North American species the body is striped 



with white. 



The Cockchafer (MelolontJui vulgaris) seldom 



occurs in sufficient abundance in England to prove 



very destructive, either in its larva or perfect state. 



It is otherwise on the Continent, where, especially 



in France, it is developed in some years in countless 



myriads, the perfect insects stripping the trees of 



their entire foliage, and the larvae destroying, by 



devouring the roots, not only the grass of pastures, 



but crops of all kinds of farm and garden produce, 



such as cereals, beetroot, strawberries, salads, and so 



forth. In a report on the ravages of the Cockchafer 



in 1865-6, presented to the Academic des Sciences in 



1868, M. Reiset valued the damage done in the 



department of Seine-Inferiextre in 1866 at more than one million sterling. The larva takes two years 



to complete its growth to the pupa stage, fourteen months of which are spent in active feeding, and ten 



months in dormant hibernation ; the duration of the pupa state is eight months, and that of the adult 



Cockchafer three months and a half, three-fourths of which are passed underground, and one-fourth, 



MELOLONTHA VULGARIS (COCKCHAFER). 



