28 Bulletin of the New Yokk State Museum. 



which belongs to swine, may after all turn out to be the most valua- 

 ble and necessary to us of any of the habits with which they are 

 endowed. I can not but think that these animals, confined 

 upon a spot so overstocked with grubs, would in a short time ferret 

 out and devour every one of them, leaving the soil cleansed, 

 mellowed, manured and well prepared for being immediately laid 

 down to grass again, or for receiving any other rotation of crops for 

 which the proprietor may deem the spot best adapted." 



Mr. Walsh, formerly State Entomologist of Illinois, had equally 

 strong faith in the value of this method of overcoming the white- 

 grub attack. After discoursing upon the great increase in the 

 insect as observed in a few preceding years, its growing injury to 

 young nurseries, and its violent irruption upon com, which had 

 formerly been exempt from it, he adds: "I suspect that the above 

 phenomena are to be wholly or partially attributed to the introduc- 

 tion of improved breeds of hogs in the place of the old, slab-sided, 

 long-nosed prairie-rooters, and to the passage of laws compelling 

 people to keep their hogs under fence, instead of allowing them to 

 run at large. * * * "Withia the last few years such laws have 

 been very generally passed in the "Western States. * * * Hence, 

 I am inclined to infer that the presence of the white grub is often 

 to be attributed to the absence of the hog." 



Digging out. — When a valuable crop has been found, too late 

 for other remedies, to be suffering from a severe attack of the grub, 

 threatening its entire destruction, it has been saved by digging out 

 the grubs by hand — popularly known as grubbing. In a pamphlet 

 recently published by Mr. K. C. Haldane, upon the "Coffee Grub 

 in Ceylon," the writer, in the discussion of several methods, states : 



"When coffee is thoroughly attacked, I know of but one cure — 

 dig out the grub. It is slow, weary work, but it pays. I gave my 

 men small dagger-shaped wooden pegs, and a cocoanut shell. 

 Another man brought a bucket round into which he emptied the 

 shells, and then took the collected grubs and put them in a five- 

 gallon drum of boiling water." By the above method from 100 to 

 150 grubs could be collected at each bush, and in one season (1882) 

 twelve tons of coffee grubs were picked from a field, in Lindula, of 

 eighty acres." 



Without occupying more space in a review and discussion of 

 various other methods that have been proposed for destroying the 



