372 NATURAL HISTORY OF ARTHROPODS. 



One of the best-known species of lamellicorns in the eastern United States is 

 Macrodactyhts subspinosus, erroneously called the " rose-bug." It is about a third of 

 an inch long, of a dull yellow color, and has long brown legs. Thgse beetles appear 

 in June, often suddenly and in immense numbers, and devour roses, and the flowers 

 and young fruit of grapes, apples, pears, cherries, and many rosaceous trees. They 

 are also abundant upon flowers of sumac {Rhus), elder, ox-eye daisy {Leucathemum 

 mdyare), and species of Spircea; but when the above-mentioned plants fail, they will 

 eat almost any kind of green vegetation. Their most serious injuries to agriculture 

 consist in their eating fruit-blossoms and young fruit, although they have been known 

 to strip the leaves from fruit-trees and grape-vines. In 1825 the Massachusetts State 

 Board of Agriculture offered a jjremium for the best essay on this insect, its natural 

 history, and efiicient means of destroying it. Dr. T. W. Harris, the well-known ento- 

 mological writer, was awarded the premium for an essay, from which the follow- 

 ing account of the life history of this insect is condensed : Each female deposits 

 about thirty nearly globular whitish eggs from one to four inches beneath the surface 

 of the ground. The larvas hatch in about twenty days, and immediately begin to feed 

 upon tender roots. They attain full size in autumn, being then nearly 0.75 of an inch 

 long, and about 0.12 of an inch in diameter. They are of a yellowish-white color, 

 with a tinge of blue towards the hinder extremity, which is thick, and obtuse or 

 rounded. In October they descend below the reach of frost, and pass the winter in a 

 torpid state. In the spring they again come near the surface of the ground, where, in 

 May, they pupate in little oval cells, the beetles emerging in June. The most prac- 

 ticable mode of capturing these beetles, when they attack fruit-trees, is to shake or jar 

 the trees, after spreading sheets beneath them. This should be done, as suggested by 

 Mr. J. A. Lintner, in the cooler parts of the day when the beetles, 

 which are always clumsy, are quite inactive. The captured beetles 

 may be killed by scalding, and fed to chickens. 



The genus Serica contains quite a number of robust brownish 

 species, with striate, often iridescent, elytra. The last pair of ab- 

 dominal stigmata are in the fifth ventral segment, which is sej)- 

 arated by a suture from propygidium. The labrum is connate 

 with the clypeus. S. vespertina is common, during June, in New 

 England, upon the sweet-briar rose. It is light brown in color, 

 and from 0.3 to 0.4 of an inch long. With it may be found 

 Fig. 432. --Serica usually S. sericea, a very dark-brown iridescent species, of about 

 the same size. 

 In Uoplia the last pair of stigmata is between the fifth ventral segment and the 

 propygidium which are connate, the middle cox® are contiguous, and the tibiae have 

 but one spur. The species are usually found on flowers, and the sexes often differ 

 greatly. Most of the species are more or less clothed with scales ; and the S. ccerulea, 

 a European species, is of a beautiful metallic blue, due to shining scales covering its 

 otherwise brown surface. 



The species of Zichnanthe are hairy insects, wjth poorly developed elytra, which 

 are divergent at the tips, and do not reach the tip of the abdomen. X. vulpina, distri- 

 buted throughout the United States, is about 0.5 of an inch long, dark brown, and nearly 

 the entire surface except the elytra is densely clothed with long, light-brown hair. 



In the third sub-family of the Scarabseidae, the Scarabseidae laparosticti, the abdom- 

 inal stigmata are situated in the membrane which connects the dorsal and ventral 



