480 Bulletin No. 116. [August, 1907. 



used with some success against the white-grubs of France. The 

 main dependence in the Old World, however, has been a thoroughly 

 organized movement for the collection of the beetles from the trees 

 at night, the. usual method of securing general, action being to pay a 

 sufficient price for the beetles in quantity to make their collection a 

 profitable enterprise during the time of their presence on the trees. 

 This method can be used to advantage only by owners of very large 

 estates or by communities or combinations of farmers acting to- 

 gether for their common benefit. The same may be said of the 

 destruction of the beetles by poisoning their food. If the ordinary 

 land owner were to proceed by himself, it is probable that his fields 

 would become infested by invasion from without even though he 

 might destroy every Alay-beetle on his own premises. The least 

 promising of these methods is the simplest and the cheapest of them 

 all — that of collecting the beetles by lantern traps. These take ef- 

 fect much the most strongly upon the males, and collect, under the 

 most favorable circumstances, only a comparatively small percentage 

 of the beetles in their neighborhood. Furthermore, it is available 

 only on dark and relatively quiet nights. 



What may be done by way of general concerted action is well 

 illustrated by a campaign of destruction carried on against the white- 

 grubs of the Swedish province of Halland during.the ten years from 

 1885 to 1895, within which time 29,736 bushels of May-beetles and 

 their larvae were collected at an expense of $15,554, or about 52 

 cents a bushel, the state usually paying half of this sum, the Eco- 

 nomic Society of the province a fourth, and the communes or coun- 

 ties the remaining fourth. The effect was especially 'shown in the 

 gradual reduction in the number of the beetles collected — from 14,- 

 801 bushels in 1887 to 5,611 in 1895, although the number of com- 

 munes participating in the work had increased in the meantime, and 

 the area covered by the collections was correspondingly greater.* 



So far as is now to be foreseen, organized work of some such de- 

 scription will finally be necessary to the control of the white-grub 

 pest in Illinois, and throughout America generally. 



*Ang^ust Lyttkins, in Entomolngisk Tidskrift for 18Q7. Stockholm, .sos. 



