372 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
cnBRnr. leaves. 
penetrates the ground sufficiently to awaken it into activity. It 
then breaks from its prison and works its way out of the ground. 
These beetles begin to make their appearance each year about the 
first of May, and become most numerous in the middle of that month. 
They are sluggish, inactive, and seemingly stupid in their move¬ 
ments. They repose during the day time, hid in the grass, or any 
other covert which they find. At dusk they awake and fly about 
slowly, aud with a humming noise, hitting among the leaves ol 
the trees and clinging thereto, and feeding upon them. They are 
most loud of the leaves of the cherry and plum, which trees they 
every year injure more or less, and occasionally they congregate 
in such numbers as to wholly strip them of their foliage, destroy¬ 
ing all hopes of any fruit from them that season. An instance 
of this kind was communicated to me four years since by Milo 
Ingalsbe, Esq., of South Hartford, at that time President of the 
Agricultural Society of this (Washington) county. He had 
seventy plum trees and a number of cherry trees of the choicest 
varieties, which never gave fairer promise of an abundant yield 
of fruit than at that time. Put a swarm of these May beetles 
suddenly gathered upon the trees, many of them being then splen¬ 
didly in bloom, and in two nights, the 15th and 16tli of May, 
wholly stripped them of their foliage, so that many of them were 
as naked as in winter. With their humming notes, these beetles 
were flying about the trees every evening until about ten o’clock, 
when they would settle in clusters of eight, ten, twenty or more, 
and would thus remain until daylight, when they would tumble 
down from the trees, flying but little, however, and hiding them¬ 
selves wherever convenient to stay through the day. These obser¬ 
vations are important, showing that between midnight and day¬ 
light is the best time for spreading sheets beneath the trees to shake 
and beat these insects into them. In a subsequent letter, dated 
June 29th, Mr. I. stated that these beetles had then disappeared 
from all his trees except an Ox-heart cherry, on which about a 
dozen were found, this being the choicest variety among his cherry 
trees — indicating that thougli seemingly such stupid creatures, 
they are good connoiseurs in selecting their food. And among 
his plums, it was the Washington, Jefferson, Lawrence and others 
of his best kinds which had been attacked with the greatest avidity. 
