The White Grub of the May Beetle. 9 



A report from North Pawlet, Yt. (New England Homestead, Nov. 

 8, 1884), states: "There is, at a low estimate, between three hundred 

 and four hundred acres of land in this town that looks as barren 

 as our roads , so far as anything green is visible. In our back lots 

 a good deal of the dry turf has been turned over by skunks, coons, 

 foxes and crows, in search of the grub." 



To Corn. — The accounts given of its destructiveness to corn are 

 numerous. Not only does it cut off the young corn when a few 

 inches high, but it will also destroy full-grown corn over entire 

 fields. On Prairie Ronde, in Michigan, it appeared in such num- 

 bers as nearly to destroy many fields of corn. Upon examination 

 of a few corn stalks left standing in a field, the roots were found 

 eaten off to within a few inches of the stalk, and often from three 

 to five large grubs in a hill. Most of the corn was killed early in 

 the season, and the few stalks left were dying a lingering death, 

 without producing any grain (Practical Entomologist, i, p. 60). 



A gentleman from Nine Mile Prairie, Missouri, writes : " They 

 are destroying whole fields of corn. I have seen fields where they 

 have destroyed the corn in patches for rods around, leaving the 

 ground as bare as the traveled road. They seem to destroy the 

 tap-root first, and afterward prey on the laterals " (Practical Ento- 

 mologist, i, p. 61). 



Prom Washington county, N. Y., we have this statement and 

 estimate of injuries to corn from the grub, in the year 1881 : " A 

 large area of corn, in the aggregate, has been badly injured or 

 entirely destroyed. On my own farm they caused the loss of one 

 hundred bushels of corn alone ; much of it would pull up by the 

 roots when struck by the knife, frequently exposing to view from 

 five to fifteen grubs" (Country Gentleman for Dec. 29, 1881, p, 

 851, c. 3). 



Mr. Glover records their extraordinary abundance in Grayson 

 county, Yirginia, in 1874, where as many as one hundred and ten 

 were counted in a single hill. They were also, during the same 

 year, quite destructive to corn crops in Huntington county, 

 Indiana, and in Montgomery county, Missouri (Report of the 

 Commissioner of Agriculture, for 1874, p. 129). 



To Strawberries.- — ■ It has long been known as especially addicted 

 to feeding upon the roots of the strawberry. Prof. Forbes, in his 

 excellent Address on Insects Affecting the Strawberry, read before 

 2 



