VOL. XLIV.] 



PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 



367 



Concerning the Grubs Destroying the Grass in Norfolk,* By Mr. Henry Baker 



F.R.S. N°484, p. 576. 



Having seen some letters lately sent from Norfolk and Suffolk^ giving an ac- 

 count, that prodigious numbers of what one letter calls grubs, and another large 

 maggots, fiill as thick and almost as long as a man's little finger, are dispersed 

 over the fields, and do great mischief in those counties, Mr. B. immediately 

 imagined that they must be the aureliae or chrysalides of some species of beetle: 

 and desiring to get what further information he could concerning them, he wrote 

 with that intent to Mr. Arderon at Norwich, f. r. s. 



Of these grubs Mr. Arderon gives the following information. They are, says 

 he, a species of insects but too common about Norwich, and have been more 

 or less numerous in that county for these 20 years past. They are the erucae of 

 the scarabaeus arboreus vulgaris major of Mr. Ray, that is the tree beetle, or 

 blind beetle, vulgarly in Norfolk called the dor. 



In different parts of England they are called the brown tree beetle, the blind 

 beetle, the chafer, the cock-chafer, the jack homer, the jefFry-cock, the May- 

 bug, and the dor. By the Dutch they are named, baum-kaefer, roub-kaefer, 

 koren worm, or corn worm, because they destroy the roots of corn; and in 

 Zealand, molenaers or millers, as Goedartius says, chap. TQ, because they bite 

 the leaves of several sorts of trees into particles as small as if they were ground. 

 In England he has likewise heard them called millers; but supposed it to be from 

 a white mealy powder with which their wings are covered. The French call them 

 hanetons. 



I have seen, says Mr. Arderon, whole closes of fine flourishing grass in sum- 

 mer time become withered, dry, and as brittle as hay in a few weeks, by this 

 vermin's eating oflf the roots; in doing which they are so dextrous, that many 

 yards of this withered grass might be rolled up in one piece, all the fibres that 

 fastened it to the ground being gnawed away. 



Closes of turnips often undergo the same fate from these devouring insects, 

 which act as if designing to do as much mischief as possible; for when one of 

 them fixes on a turnip, he eats only the middle small root, which soon causes it 

 to wither and die, and then moves on to the next. In like manner they destroy 

 the roots of wheat, rye, &c. and almost every other useful vegetable in their 



a small leather thong, may have been in use before that of waxed thread used by shoe-makers, 

 formerly called cordwainers." 



Fig. 4, shows the shoe sideways, laced as when on the foot. Fig. 5, the same seen from above. 

 Fig. 6, the same unlaced, and laid flat, to show the manner of its being cut out of the raw hide. 



— Orig. 



* The insects whose ravages are here described are the larvse of the common cockchafer or scara- 

 bocus mclohntha, Linn. 



