SAMOUELLE S 



About sixty years ago a farm near Norwich was 

 so infested with Cock-chafers, that the farmer and 

 his servants affirmed that they gathered eighty 

 bushels of them ; and the grubs had done so much 

 injury that the court of that city, in compassion to 

 the poor fellow's misfortune, allowed him 251. 



Mouffet informs us, that in the month of February 

 1574 there were such multitudes of them in the 

 western parts of England, that those which fell into 

 the river Severn completely cloged the water-wheels 

 of the mill. 



The rooks and gulls devour immense numbers of 

 the grubs of this destructive insect, by which they 

 render a most essential service to mankind, and 

 great care ought to be taken to cherish and protect 

 them. The sole employment of rooks, for nearly 

 three months in the spring of the year, is to search 

 for insects of this sort for food ; and the havoc that 

 a numerous flock makes among them must be very 

 great. 



A cautious observer, having found a nest of five 

 young jays, remarked that each of these birds, while 

 yet very young, consumed at least fifteen of these 

 full-sized grubs in a day ; and averaging their sizes, 

 it may be said that each consumed twenty : this for 

 the five makes a hundred : and if we suppose the 

 parents to devour between them the same number, 

 it appears that the whole family consumed about two 

 hundred every day ; this in three months amount 

 to twenty thousand. But as the grub continues in 

 the same state for four years, this single pair, with 

 their family alone, without reckoning their descen- 



