280 VEGETABLE FOES AND DISEASES 



and produces a clicking sound, and when placed on its 

 back it jumps up and makes a peculiar click. The 

 beetles are found under stones at the roots of grasses, 

 in hedges, fields and gardens. They fly well, and lay 

 eggs on grasses, cereals, weeds, and in the earth. The 

 larvae from the eggs live in the earth near the roots of 

 plants on which they feed. The larva or wire-worm, so 

 called from its likeness in toughness and shape to a piece 

 of wire, is from six- to seven-eighths of an inch long, 

 very shiny, and of a yellow colour. It has a few hairs 

 on its body, three pairs of four -jointed legs in the first 

 three segments, and a sucker foot on the terminal 

 segment. It has very strong jaws meeting over the 

 mouth, well adapted for biting roots and fibres. With 

 these mandibles it quickly tears away the soft parts 

 of the root-stems of cereals just above the roots and 

 kills the plants ; it also bites off the roots of various 

 useful crops, and its attacks in garden and field are 

 more to be dreaded than most other insects. It feeds 

 on stems and roots at all seasons of the year, except 

 during very hard frosts, and lives from three to five 

 years in the larval or wire-worm stage, according to 

 circumstances, then, full-fed, it goes down deep into 

 the earth and makes a little oval cocoon of earth, 

 and changes from the larval (A, c, p. 286) to the 

 pupal stage (A, e) from which the beetle emerges in 

 two or three weeks. 



The larva or wire-worm of Agriotes obscurus is 

 much like that of A. lineatus in shape and colour, but 

 slightly larger in size, and the larva of A. sputator is 



