ROSE CHAFER ; MAY-BUG. 23 



Eose Chafers have caused serious mischief in a good many 

 locahties during the past season. As a common thing (that is, in 

 ordinary seasons and excepting under very special circumstances, or 

 just here and there) no great attention is paid to the pretty brown and 

 green beetles which, however destructive to Eoses for a while, pass 

 away presently, and unless they have extended their ravages to leafage, 

 or much more widely than is customary, are little more thought of. 

 Also they are known, but by few, to be the parents of the grubs, like 

 little Cockchafer grubs, that presently ruin the adjacent lawns and 

 meadows by preying on the roots of the Grass. Last season, however, 

 Eose Chafer presence, both in beetle and maggot state, was too great, 

 and too marked, to escape observation, and the notes contributed may 

 help to a better understanding of the nature of the attack. 



Amongst points which have been especially noticed in the following 

 observations are, — firstly, the continuance of this Eose Chafer infes- 

 tation for year after year in one locality when thoroughly established. 

 Secondly, that when the swarms of these pretty brown and green 

 Chafers appear at their work of destruction, whether on Eoses or 

 elsewhere, unless means are taken to destroy them, their disap- 

 pearance in the natural course of things will be followed by an autumn 

 appearance of grubs (see figure, p. 22) in Grass-fields, lawns, and the 

 like places, which may prove possibly only disfiguring from the patchy 

 condition of the field where Grass has died from attack at the root, or 

 possibly may be on a scale making new laying down of the field 

 requisite. Where grubs are in the numbers named at page 25, of 

 twenty-one grubs or somewhat more to a foot square of ground, this 

 would be somewhere about one grub to every two and a half inches 

 of Grass roots, and the results are necessarily serious. Thirdly, that 

 whilst the beetles are on Eoses or leafage from which they can be 

 shaken down, a great deal may be done to get rid of the infestation 

 surely, cheaply, and easily ; but when the grubs are at work at the 

 roots of the Grass, I should certainly say myself, judging by what 

 information I can gather, that to destroy them without greatly injuring 

 or destroying the Grass is a matter well nigh impossible, even with the 

 assistance of the flocks of different kinds of birds, which do their best 

 to aid us in clearing the pests. 



One of the first notices which I received during the past season of 

 the Eose Chafers being observable in great numbers, was sent me on 

 the 23rd of May, from Foxbury, near Sevenoaks, Kent, with specimens 

 accompanying, by Miss Matthews, who wrote as follows: — "I am 

 desired by my brother to forward to you a few specimens of an insect 

 which has been found here in immense numbers during the summer 

 months of the last two years, and is now on the lawns, meadows, and 

 fruit plantations of his property in greater numbers than before. The 



