450 THE INSECT WORLD. 
in their last year, do they attack also ligneous vegetation. When 
they have gnawed away the lateral roots of a young tree, the 
new shoots corresponding to them dry up. The larve then attack 
the principal root, and thus bring about the death of the tree. 
There will be found round the roots of trees thus attacked immense 
numbers of these worms. M. Deschiens relates that he had seen 
six hectares of acorns, sown three times in the space of five years 
with a perfect result, entirely destroyed as many times by the larvee 
of the cockchafer. A nurseryman of Bourg-la-Reine suffered, in 
1854, from the ravages of these terrible larvee, losses which he 
estimated at thirty thousand francs. Others only preserved about 
a hundredth part of their plants. In Prussia they destroyed, in 
1835, a considerable nursery of trees in the Institut Forestier. In 
the forest of Kolbetz more than a thousand measures of wild pines 
were destroyed in the same way. 
We shall not, then, be surprised to learn that the thunders of 
excommunication were formerly launched at the cockchafers, as 
they were also at the caterpillars and the locusts. We do not 
know whether this had much impression upon them. In 1479, 
the cockchafers having occasioned a famine in the country, were 
cited before the ecclesiastical tribunal of Lausanne. The advocate 
Fribourg, who defended them, did not find, doubtlessly, in the 
resources of his eloquence arguments powerful enough in their 
favour; for the tribunal, after mature deliberation, condemned 
the accused troop, and sentenced them to be banished from the 
territory. But it isnot enough to pass a sentence—there must also 
be the means of putting it in execution ; and these were wanting 
to the tribunal of Lausanne. And so the condemned cockchafers 
continued to live on Swiss land, without appearing mindful of the 
condemnation which had been fulminated against them. 
The larvee of the cockchafer are not easily destroyed. They 
successfully resist those scourges which one fancies must harm 
them. Thus the inundation which devastated the banks of the 
Sadne, fifteen years ago, had no effect on them. The land and 
meadows, which had remained for from four to five weeks under 
water, were none the more rid of them. The only circumstance 
which is really hurtful to them, and to the adult cockchafer, is 
late frost in the month of April and. May. When these frosts 
