STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
529 
WIREWORMS. COMMON WIRBWORMS AND SNAPPING-BEETLE DESCRIBED. 
garden having been neglected through a few seasons and becom¬ 
ing overgrown with quack grass, in April a perfect swarm of these 
beetles were there gathered, basking in the warm sunshine, having 
probably hatched from wireworms which had there been nurtured. 
They occur quite frequently in strawberry beds and similar places 
where the dense foliage furnishes a hiding place for them. And 
out of the garden they abound among the grass in pastures and 
meadows, and on the leaves of the apple and other fruit trees, 
and those of the oak, birch and other forest trees. Upon the 
approach of cold weather they resort to old and decaying trees to 
pass the winter, crawling under the loose bark of their trunks 
and into the crevices in rotten wood, where they are met with at 
the close of autumn and in the beginning of spring, a few being 
also found under stones and fragments of wood lying upon the 
ground. 
The wireworms which I meet with in the garden are nearly all 
of one particular kind. I hence have little doubt they are the 
larva of the Common snapping-beetle, as this also is of much 
more frequent occurrence in the garden than any other species of 
Elater. This garden wireworm grows to an inch in length and is 
particularly distinguished from other wireworms by having three 
obtuse teeth at the end of its body, the middle one of which is 
more projecting and prominent than the lateral ones. A dorsal 
view of this worm is given in the cut, Fig. 14. 
It is of a cylindrical form, moderately 
flattened, its surface smoothly polished 
and shining, with a strongly impressed 
line along the middle of the back and a 
few fine bristles placed in a transverse 
row upon the hind patt of each segment. 
Fig. 14. Common wireworm. It is taniished yellow> of a deopcr fcmt 
than usual, one segment at each end being much darker, of a liver brown hue, and the 
mouth black. The last sogment is noarly twice as long as broad, its anterior half smooth, 
with two impressed lines above, diverging forward, and an impressed lino upon each side of 
tho back. Its posterior half narrowing and bluntly rounded at the tip, its upper side 
flattened, rough, with a wido shallow groove in tho middle. The hind odgo with three 
angular projections or obtuse tooth, and forward of these, on each side, another very 
slight and more obtuse projection. The younger and half grown worms of a much paler 
color. 
Iu its perfect state tho Common snapping-beetle is slightly over a half inch in length, 
different specimens varying in their dimensions from less than fivo to nearly six tenths of 
an inch. It is a long, narrow bootle, about four times as long as wide, its wing-oovers 
tapering from their base, almost imperceptibly at first, and more strongly as they approach 
their tips, whioh are bluntly rounded. It is glossy and of a dark chestnut or blackish 
hiown color, tho preserved specimens frequently showing in places obsoure chostnut clouds 
[Aa.J 34 
