INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. I33 



own observation. It undermines the richest meadows, and so loosens the 

 turf that it will roll up as if cut with a turfing-spade. These grubs did 

 so much injury about seventy years ago to a poor farmer near Norwich, 

 that the court of that city, out of compassion, allowed him 25/., and the 

 man and his servant declared that he had gathered eighty bushels of the 

 beetle.^ In the year 1785 many provinces of France were so ravaged by 

 them, that a pretiiium was offered by the government for the best mode of 

 destroying them. They do not confine themselves to grass, but eat also 

 the roots of corn ; and it is to feast upon this grub more particularly that 

 the rooks follow the plough.^ 



The larva also of another species of a cognate genus {Hoylia puher- 

 ulenta) is extremely destructive in moist meadows, rooting under the her- 

 bage, so that, the soil becoming loose, the grass soon withers and dies. 

 Swine are very fond of these grubs, and will devour vast numbers of them, 

 and the rooks lend their assistance. 



Amongst the Lepidoptera, the greatest enemy of our pastures is the 

 Charaas Graminis, which, however, is said not to touch the foxtail grass. 

 In the years 1740, 1741, 1742, 1748, 1749, they multiplied so prodig- 

 iously and committed such ravages in many provinces of Sweden, that the 

 meadows became quite white and dry as if a fire had passed over them.' 

 This destructive insect, though found in this country, is luckily scarce 

 amongst us ; but our northern neighbors appear occasionally to have suffer- 

 ed greatly from it. In 1759, and again in 1802, the high sheep farms in 

 Tweedale were dreadfully infested by a caterpillar, which was probably 

 the larva of this moth ; spots of a mile square were totally covered by 

 them, and the grass devoured to the root.'* In 1835 the larvae of this 

 moth so infested some districts in Bohemia that Prince Clary, by employ- 

 ing two hundred men for four and a half days, collected twenty-three 

 bushels, computed to contain four and a half millions of caterpillars.^ 



Grasses both natural and artificial are attacked by the larvae of several 

 species of beetles. Those of Coccinella impunctata (which with C. 

 Argus Scriba, and some other species, live on vegetable food) destroy, in 

 Germany, sainfoin, clover, and tares ; those of Colaspis barbara, in Spain, 

 whole fields of lucerne (^Medicago sativa^) ; and those of Galleruca 

 Tanaceti, natural pasturage, having greatly injured that of Mount Jura in 

 Switzerland in ISSS.*^ Even the seeds of grasses have their insect 

 enemies. Mr. H. Gibbs stated at the meeting of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society, May 5, 1841, that generally not one in a dozen of the seeds of 

 the Foxtail grasses (^Alopecurus) vegetate, owing to their vitality being 

 destroyed by a small orange-colored grub (Cecidomyia?).^ 



Most of the insects I have hitherto mentioned attack our crops partially, 

 confining themselves to one or two kinds only ; but there are some species 



1 Philos. Trans. 1741. 581. ~ 



* There would seem to be a prospect of cockchafers being made in some degree to repay 

 the previous injury they cause, if the statement in the newspapers (June, 1841,) be correct, 

 that M. Breard, mayor of Honfleur in France, and proprieter of an oil mill, having offered 

 one franc per bushel for cockchafers, procured seventeen bushels, from which he obtained 

 twenty-eight quarts of good lamp oil. A kind of grease has also lately been made from 

 them in Hungary. 



3 De Geer, ii. 341. Aman. Acad. iii. 355. * Farmer's Mag. iii. 487. 



* KoUar on Ins. injurious to Gardeners, !cc. 105. 126 

 « Dufoiir, Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, v. 372. 



7 Ibid. iii. 19. « Gardener's Chronicle, 1841. p. 311. 



12 



