COLEOPTERA OK BEETLES. 163 



beneficial, if applied in a proper manner. Vaporite also tends 

 to check them. Mustard is never touched by these larvae, and 

 thus may be advantageously employed as a green manure. It 

 should be let grow to about a foot high, and then either 

 ploughed in direct or partly fed off by sheep, and then turned 

 in : excellent results follow this method. As wireworm move 

 about in the soil from plant to plant, frequent and heavy 

 rollings with a Cambridge ring-roller cannot fail to give relief : 

 in attacks upon wheat and barley this is the best method, 

 followed by a good dressing of artificial manure to force on 

 growth and repair the damage. The destruction of all weed 

 growths, particularly couch - grass, is highly necessary ; wire- 

 worm are most destructive on badly farmed and unclean land. 

 1 know of no manures, unless it be seaweed, deleterious to 

 them. Mustard dross has been said to have good results in 

 driving them away, but experiments in the laboratory and on 

 the farm do not bear out this statement. In garden cultivation 

 the use of bisulphide of carbon and trapping with carrots and 

 pieces of mangolds may be resorted to with good effects. An 

 excellent plan is to drill the artificial manures with the seed ; 

 this keeps the wireworm off for some time and allows the 

 plants to grow away. The value of the roolc and other birds 

 is considered in a later chapter. 



The LambIjLicoenia or Cockchapbrs. 



The Eose (fig. 79) and Stag Beetles also belong here. The 

 Cockchafers are called Melolonthidae, and have a peculiar form 

 of antenna. The common Cockchafer (Melolontha vulgaris), 

 fig. 80, a large beetle about an inch long, with brown elytra, 

 having five ridges running down them, and pointed abdomen 

 with black and white alternately down the sides, is often very 

 destructive in both adult and larval stages. The antennse have 

 seven curious leaf-like lamellse in the male (e) and six (f) in 

 the female. The larvae (c) are large, white, soft grubs, often 



