affecting the Turnips, Corn-crops, ^'c. 
195 
as the root is equally acceptable to them. He says, the Wire- 
worm begins on the edge of the leaf and eats it away like a cater- 
pillar, and often cuts the leaf off at the top of the stalk, and it 
may sometimes be found on the ground half devoured. One Wire- 
worm will consume about as much as five or six flies (Altica 
nemonim) could do in the same time." The following remarks 
by the same accurate observer throw so much new light upon the 
economy of this destructive animal, that I need not make any 
apology for laying them before the reader.* — " The Wireworm," 
he states, " seldom feeds above-ground in the daytime, unless it 
be cloudy and dark ; at such times I have observed them devour- 
ing the young turnip-plants before the rough leaf has been 
formed ; but their most destructive operations are carried on be- 
neath the surface of the earth, where they attack the root ; in the 
very early state of the plant, after eating this through, the upper 
part of the plant is gradually drawn down into the earth and de- 
voured, so that the plants disappear without any perceptible 
cause, and without any trace of them being left. In the more 
advanced state of the plant their devastation appears to be con- 
fined to eating through the root : and having thus killed one plant, 
they proceed to another. If a turnip-plant appears drooping (as 
if from the want of water), whilst those in its neighbourhood are 
fresh and erect, a Wireworm (sometimes half-a-dozen) will be 
sure to be found at the root, if the earth around it be carefully re- 
moved." 
If noxious insects be dreaded by the farmer, the gardener has 
no less cause to apprehend their mischievous assaults ; and from 
the great variety of these animals to -which his culinary vege- 
tables, as well as the fruits of the orchard, fall a sacrifice, they 
become in truth domestic plagues, which are brought to his own 
door. Amongst them are the Wireworms, especially those pro- 
duced by the beetles called Elater obscuriis (fig. 25), and E. sputa- 
tor — this last is abundant everywhere ; arid in the spring and 
summer the gardener often has the misfortune to see his newly- 
planted lettuces suddenly commence withering and dying : on 
pulling or digging up such plants a Wireworm is found at the 
roots, considerably like a mealworm, but more flattened, of a 
pale yellow, from 6 to 7 lines long, and about the size of a 
pigeon's quill. 
We learn from Kollar f that the larva of E. sputator, Fab.J 
undergoes its transformations in the ground, and remains only 
* Trans. Ent. Soc, vol. li. p. 30. 
1' Naturg. der schaed. Insect., p. 149. 
X It is impossible to say if he intend the Linnaean species ; I think not, 
and am rather disposed to consider it the E- ruficaudis, but it is very 
doubtful. 
o 2 
