STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
373 
CnERRY. LEAVES. 
Apple trees, which were standing alternately with his plum trees, 
were not in the least molested. Mr. I. has recently informed me 
that his trees have never been reinvaded by these beetles since that 
time. 
These insects are numerous all over our country. In my own 
neighborhood they have been common every year, I think, since 
I first became acquainted with them, more than twenty-five years 
ago; yet I have here never known the trees to be stripped of theij? 
foliage by them, or the turf to be severed by their larvae, although 
two or three instances of the latter have been related to me as 
having occurred in this town, and I have several times heard of 
the same phenomenon in other places. It appears to be a most 
singular and remarkable circumstance in the economy of these 
insects, that, while it is their ordinary habit to live dispersed and 
apart from each other, they at times become gregarious, both in 
their larva and their perfect state, multitudes of them assembling 
together in a flock, and by their conjoined labors utterly devasta 
ting what they attack. Some other insects, however, show this 
same habit. It is only occasionally that the migratory'locust of 
the east, so renowned in story, congregates together in swarms 
and flies off to a distance. And instances have occurred in which 
the common red-legged grasshopper, which is scattered about the 
fields of our own country, has done the same in years when it has 
been unusually abundant. 
The history of our May beetle and its transformations have 
never been fully observed, but everything known respecting it 
concurs to show that it is exactly analogous to the cockchaffer or 
May bug of Europe, (Polyphylla Melolontha, Linn.,) and occupies 
the place of that species upon this continent. The grubs of that 
insect are about five years in obtaining their growth. The beetles 
pair soon after they come from the ground, and the male lives but 
a few days. The female crawls back into the ground and there 
drops her eggs, which are nearly a hundred in number, after 
which she again emerges, and being now decrepit with age, she 
feeds but little and dies in a short time. 
Among the natural destroyers of our May beetle is the skunk, 
whose food appears to consist of these insects almost entirely, 
during the short period of their existence. Some cats will also 
