518 SUPPLEMENT 



baeus, with which Linnaeus, Geoffrey, and some other na- 

 turalists had united them. They have subsequently given 

 birth to the establishment of several genera or sub-genera ; 

 but notwithstanding all these reductions, the genus is still 

 very extensive, and might become the object of a monograph 

 so much the more interesting, inasmuch as many of these 

 coleoptera, being a scourge to agriculture, demand but too 

 urgently the attention of the naturalist. 



Of all maleficent insects, there are very few indeed which 

 are more mischievous and destructive than the melolonthae. 

 From their birth to their death these insects feed on vegetable 

 substances, and occasion to them a most considerable degree 

 of damage. In the larva state, they gnaw for two, three, or 

 four consecutive years, the tender roots of annual plants, 

 those of perennial plants, of shrubs, and even those of the 

 hardest trees. In Europe, and in all cold and temperate 

 climates, those larvae cease their devastations during the win- 

 ter, sink more deeply into the earth, in which they form a 

 lodge, where they pass that season without taking any nutri- 

 ment, and in a sort of lethargic state. When they have 

 become perfect insects, the melolonthae abandon the earth, 

 and subsist no longer upon roots. But they then attack the 

 leaves of trees and plants. Some years ago, the species which 

 were found in the neighbourhood of Paris were so multiplied, 

 that they despoiled, in a very little time, almost all the trees 

 of the forest. The common Melolonthae gnaw without 

 distinction all kinds of roots, in their first state. When ar- 

 rived to their final form, they attack and destroy the leaves 

 of almost every kind of tree. A species, common in the 

 southern parts of France, gnaws the buds and the tender 

 leaves of the pines. The Melolontha vitis, thus named 

 because it despoils the vine of its leaves, also attacks the wil- 

 low, the poplar, and the majority of fruit trees. 



This genus is very numerous in species ; the majority of 



