STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
523 
WIRETVORMS. HATCH FROM EGGS. TWO TO FIVE TEARS IN GROWING. 
I ofice observed a female of the short-horned Elatcr, Ludius bre- 
vicornis , at the root of a recently-set cabbage plant, where she sank 
herself down in the earth the whole length of her body, her swol¬ 
len abdomen showing she was on the point of extruding her crop 
of eggs. Everything indicated that she was about dropping some 
of these upon the root of this plant. Other business was too 
pressing at the moment to permit me to wait and watch her sub¬ 
sequent movements, and I accordingly inclosed her in a vial. 
Two days after I could not discover any eggs yet dropped in this 
vial, but at the end of three days more, on examining, I found 126 
eggs had been deposited. They were scattered about, irregularly, 
singly or several in a cluster together, not glued to the damp sur¬ 
face inside, though perhaps they would have become adherent if 
dried. 
The eggs were broad oval and quite small, only three hun¬ 
dredths of an inch long, of an opake white color, smooth and 
glossy, soft and rupturing on being gently pressed upon, the fluid 
within forming a shining, varnish-like, colorless spot upon the sur¬ 
face where it dried. 
The worms which come from these eggs must be so very minute 
as to be nearly or quite invisible to the eye, and they grow very 
slowly. The Swedish naturalist, Bjerkauder, in his account of the 
wireworms, published nearly a century ago, stated that they are 
five,years in growing to their full size. I am not aware that any 
one has since investigated this subject, all subsequent writers 
contenting themselves to copy his statement. The opinion is 
impressed upon me that these wireworms, for the most part, are 
only two years in growing to maturity. There are two facts which 
lead me to this inference. First, when I have obtained several 
worms of one species, I have repeatedly observed they were of 
two sizes only, the smaller ones about half as large as the larger 
ones, indicating them to be respectively one and two years old; 
whereas, if they were live years in growing to maturity they 
would occur of all sizes. Although Mr. Curtis met with a variety 
of sizes at the same time and around the same turnip root, ho 
remarks that possibly two kinds were present. Second, -where 
explicit statements are given of the crops destroyed by -wireworms, 
I observe that this destruction always occurs the first and second 
years after the ground has been broken up from grass. Is the 
crop of the third year ever harmed? But if these worms were 
