WIREWORM: ITS HISTORY, ATTACKS, 
AND REMEDIES. 
The following lecture on wireworm was delivered by 
Miss E. Ormerod, Special Lecturer on Economic 
Entomology at the College, and Consulting Entomologist 
to the Royal Agricultural Society, to the students of 
the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, on Friday, 
June 22nd, 1883:— 
On the previous occasions on which I have had the 
pleasure of addressing you, we have considered some of 
the main points in the history and the habits of in¬ 
jurious insects, and the manner in which a knowledge 
of the habits of these farm pests may help us to bring 
measures of agricultural treatment to bear on them at 
the times when they lie most in our power: and we 
have also considered the history and methods of preven¬ 
tion of “Turnip Fly” in some detail. At present I 
purpose offering you some observations on the history 
and methods of prevention of “ Wireworm.” 
The habits of this destructive insect enemy differ 
from those of almost all the other kinds which infest 
our British crops, inasmuch as they unite the three 
following distinctions. The lifetime of the grub extends 
over as much as five years, and during this time it 
feeds in winter as well as in summer, unless the cold is 
so severe as to cause torpidity, and (with the exception 
of mustard) it appears to feed on the roots, or under¬ 
ground portion of the leafage, of almost all kinds of 
common farm crops which may be successively put into 
the ground. 
I believe that we are all of us pretty well acquainted 
with the “click beetles” which lay the eggs from 
which the wireworms are produced. There are many 
kinds of these Elaters, or “ Skip Jacks,” as they are 
often called, from their power of springing up in the 
air if they have been laid on their backs, and regaining 
their position with a skip, or a spring and a click ; but 
the kinds most frequently met with are the striped 
click beetle, the Mater or Agriotes lineatus ; also a 
kind which differs very little from it, excepting in being 
of a more general brownish or blackish tint, known as 
Agriotes obscurus ; a smaller kind, the A. sputator, 
which besides occurring in profusion in all the common 
localities of click beetles, is stated to be often found in 
rubbish left by floods; and a fourth kind, the Athous 
ruficaudis, or hcemorrhoidalis, which has wing cases 
