149 
LAWNS RUINED BY THE WHITE GRUB. 
The white grub has appeared in great abundance on the lawns 
of the New York Botanical Garden this summer, completely 
killing the grass in many places so that the sod may be rolled 
up by hand. This grub is the larval form of the June bug or 
May beetle, which deposits its eggs in the grass on the lawns 
about midsummer. The eggs soon hatch into tiny grubs which 
live upon the roots of the grass for the remainder of the season 
and also during the two succeeding seasons, when they burrow 
several inches into the ground, change into the pupa stage, and 
emerge early the following summer as mature beetles. 
These grubs have been in the lawns of the Garden for several 
years, but they were not noticed because of the severe droughts 
and were not plentiful enough to entirely kill the grass. They 
are now so abundant that a gallon may be collected from an 
area seven yards long and six yards wide. We have killed great 
numbers of them by hand after raking off the dead sod with an 
ordinary garden rake, but this process is too slow and tedious 
for an area of several acres. A flock of starlings which lives 
upon the grounds of the Garden has been very diligent in destroy- 
ing these grubs. In many places, the dead sod is filled with 
holes made by the bills of these birds in their search for the 
grubs. By turning up the sod with a light cultivator, we have 
enabled the starlings to get at the grubs more quickly. A small 
flock of crows has also worked with the starlings early in the 
morning before visitors usually arrive. 
Several remedies have been suggested for the white grub, 
but none of them appears to be entirely effective in the presence 
of an epidemic like the present one. In the Middle West, 
where this grub is very common and very destructive, grass- 
lands are ploughed when affected and sown in corn and other 
annual crops. Farmers often plough a few furrows across a 
field and turn in the hogs, which after once started go through 
the entire field after the grubs. The most effective remedy is 
probably to plough lightly and have a flock of chickens follow 
the plough. Scveral chemical poisons have been suggested, 
