246 FIELD, FOREST AND FARM 



tare. A hectare will raise a crop of one hundred 

 thousand beets. Thus each beet was gnawed by at 

 least two worms. Allowing eighty thousand rape- 

 stalks to the hectare, we find each stalk feeding three 

 worms, or very nearly. It is clear that under these 

 desperate conditions no rape-seed oil or beet-root 

 sugar can be produced. Every plant perishes. In 

 the single year 1866 the Lower Seine lost from this 

 cause about twenty-five million francs. 



"In 1868, in different parts of Prance, notably in 

 Normandy, the multiplication of June-bugs was so 

 great as to spread alarm throughout the rural dis- 

 tricts. Trees were completely stripped of their fo- 

 liage, and in the evening, when the insects fly abroad, 

 such clouds of them encumbered the atmosphere as 

 to make it difficult to walk about. Almost every- 

 where there were June-bug hunts organized, and 

 those who gathered the insects received from the 

 public treasury from four to six francs per hundred 

 liters. In one place alone, Fontaine-Mallet, near 

 Havre, there were gathered four thousand and fifty- 

 nine kilograms of the insects in four days. The 

 school-master sent his pupils out after June-bugs, 

 and four hundred and forty kilograms was the result 

 of one day's collecting. All these insects were 

 carted to Havre by the wagon-load and drowned in 

 the sea. In certain communes they were brought to 

 the town hall in such quantities that there was no 

 way of disposing of them. The air reeked with the 

 stench they made. 



"It is said that in 1668 the June-bugs destroyed all 



