The Cockchafer, Or May Bug. Melontha vulgaris. Stephons.

Fig. VIII. Fig. A. Fig. B.

Fig. A., perfect insect, nat. size; Fig. B., larra, nat. size.

This insect belongs to the order Coleoptera and to the family Melolonthidæ. It is endowed with an enormous appetite, and not of a discriminating or fastidious character. In its perfect state it eats the foliage of trees, shrubs, grasses, and corn plants. In its larval state it feeds upon the roots of corn plants, grasses, and other crops, and it is in this form that it is mainly injurious to agriculturists.

The perfect insect is known throughout this country, and called variously cockchafer, May bug, Boombug, Boomerbug. It feeds in this form for the most part upon the leaves of the oak, maple, thorn, beech, birch, apple, and pear trees. It flies and feeds in the twilight, and goes from tree to tree with heavy, awkward flight, and with a booming sound—"the shard-borne beetle's drowsy hum"—and remains upon the under part of the leaves of trees and shrubs torpid and dormant during the day. This is the insect which is tortured by cruel boys to this day. Tormenting cockchafers is practised now as it was in the time of the ancient Greeks, as we read in Aristophanes' Comedy of the Clouds. To trees in some districts and in certain seasons much destruction is occasioned by cockchafers. In France whole oak forests have been deprived of foliage by their attacks. Köllar says that in Germany they are often found in such numbers on oaks, willows, hazel, and fruit trees, that the branches bend with their weight. Occasionally in England they have been so numerous as to resemble a flight of locusts. Miss Ormerod relates that eighty bushels of them were collected upon one farm, and Westwood, in his Introduction to the Classification of page 33 Insects, remarks that 14,000 cockchafers were collected in a few days by children and men near Blois, in France. About fifty years ago the Council of the Society of Arts offered a premium for the best means of destroying this insect, but without any satisfactory results.

The larvæ are most destructive in grass land, devouring the roots of the grasses and destroying the herbage. In these cases the grasses lie withered on the ground, looking as if they had been violently pulled up. The rooks have been often accused of doing this by ignorant persons, as well as of divers other imaginary delinquencies, simply because they have congregated in meadows and have been actively engaged in digging for these large grubs, which are savoury morsels to them. It is not by any means infrequent to find acres of grass land destroyed by these grubs. The soil is honeycombed by them and the grasses can be pulled up without any effort. Wheat, barley, and oats are frequently much injured by the cockchafer grubs which weaken the plants by gnawing their roots, and in some cases kill them outright. Flax also suffers often from their attacks. They are very destructive in fir plantations, biting the roots so as to cause the death of young trees.