Rose chafer ; may-bug. 25 



extirpate them that can be economically applied." . . . "I have a 

 number of chickens and guinea fowls feasting on the grubs, and I shall 

 turn out a few pigs, as you suggest, and see what they will do. But I 

 find that these grubs can go down very deep in my light soil. I am 

 sending you a box containing some of the grubs, packed in a small 

 piece of the destroyed pasture in which they were found, and it will 

 give you some idea of the number of them when I state that all that 

 are contained in this little box were found near the surface on a space 

 one foot square." (These amounted to upwards of twenty-one grubs. 

 — E. A. 0.) 



For the following note of great presence of the Rose Chafers having 

 occurred for a few days, and of the simple method used to get rid of 

 them, I am indebted to Mr. T. P. Newman, of Hazelhurst, Haslemere. 

 Writing on the 20th of September, Mr. Newman mentioned : — " They 

 swarmed with me for two or three days only ; we did nothing by day, 

 but acted on your hint at dusk ; put sheets under the fruit trees, shook 

 the latter, and picked up hundreds of the beetles, which made no 

 attempt to escape, and destroyed them in hot water. They attack the 

 Scotch and Austrian briers much more than any other Eoses." 



Specimens of the same kind of Chafer grub, and at the same stage 

 of growth as those which were then being forwarded from various 

 localities as doing great mischief to Grass where the Rose Chafers had 

 appeared earlier in the season, were sent me on the 28th of September 

 by Mr. C. R. Longbourne, of Ripsley, Liphook, Hants. Amongst 

 various points of interest it will be seen that date is given of the first 

 observation of damage being established to an amount sufficient to 

 attract birds to the grubs in the injured turf. 



Mr. Longbourne mentioned : — "At the suggestion of my neighbour, 

 Mr. Newman, I am forwarding in a small box some specimens of 

 grubs taken from the meadow near my house ; it is suggested that they 

 are the product of the small brown beetle which appears yearly on our 

 lawns and fields in the month of June, and which this summer swarmed 

 in unusual quantities. The grubs this season have done considerable 

 damage to some fields and lawns in this neighbourhood. They eat the 

 roots of the Grass, which therefore withers and comes away in patches 

 when touched. Large flocks of starlings, numbering several hundreds 

 in a flock, frequent the fields where these grubs abound, and the soil 

 is perforated by the birds' beaks. In the field in front of my house my 

 fowls are constantly hunting after the grubs, and, by their scratching, 

 they have made large patches of it look like a ploughed field, the Grass 

 plant coming away in tufts, as before mentioned. I should state that 

 our soil is a poor sand, and that, in the fields in question, the plant of 

 Grass is very inferior. P.S. — Judging from the work of my fowls, I 

 should say the grubs first appeared near the surface about the middle 



