THE JUNE-BUG
“It is a discovery of no small importance in your eyes, my young
friends, when you find the first June-bug of the season on the young
foliage. In the evening you get together in a corner and talk about it,
you make plans for the morrow, and all your conversation is about the
June-bug that has just arrived. You arrange to get up early the next
day and shake the trees in order to bring down the sleeping insects;
you get ready a box, pierced with holes, to receive the captives, and
put in a handful of fresh leaves for them to feed on.
“At the first streak of dawn you are up; you visit the willows, the
poplars, the hawthorn hedges wet with dew. It is a fruitful hunt: the
June-bugs, benumbed by the chill of night, fall like hail when you
shake the branches. Soon you have a half a score of them, then a dozen,
then twenty. It is enough. You go back to the house with your prisoners
fluttering and struggling in the foot of an old stocking, in your
handkerchief, or in your cap. You bring a supply of green leaves.
“And now for your experiments! You tie a long string to the leg of one
of the beetles and put the insect in the sun. It inflates and deflates
its belly, raises its wing-sheaths, and expands its wings. There it
goes, into the air. Your experiment has succeeded. These delights of
the June-bug season, my children—enjoy them as long as you can. Other
pleasures pale beside them. In view of the amusement it affords you I
gladly welcome the June-bug. But turn now to a less pleasing aspect of
the matter.
“Like every other insect, the June-bug is at first a grub. In that form
it lives three years in the ground, whereas in its final state, when it
is found on trees and bushes, it lives but two or three weeks. This
grub or larva is commonly called the white grub, also the fish-worm,
and sometimes the ground-hog. Look at it carefully for a moment and
tell me what you see.”
“I see,” answered Louis, “a fat, big-bellied worm, slow in its
movements, and fond of lying curled up on its side. It is of a whitish
color with a yellowish head.”
“Yes, and what else?”
“It has six legs, not made for running on the surface of the ground,
but for crawling underneath; and it has strong jaws for biting the
roots of plants. Its head is capped with horn to help it in boring
through the soil.”
“Very good,” was Uncle Paul’s approving comment; “and you see how the
stomach is distended with food, which shows in a darker tint through
the white skin of the paunch. So gorged is the worm, in fact, that it
cannot stand on its legs, but lies lazily on its side.
“For three years this fat grub lives under ground, always under ground,
tunneling like a mole in all directions, and living on roots. Then it
makes for itself a little chamber out of earth, very smooth inside, and
shuts itself up there; after which it proceeds to transform itself into
a nymph, and then into a June-bug. Everything serves it for food: the
roots of grass and of trees, of cereals and of fodder, of vegetables
and of flowers. In winter it buries itself deep in the ground and
becomes torpid; at the approach of spring it returns to the upper
layers of the soil, installs itself among the roots, and goes from
plant to plant, leaving devastation in its path. You have, let us
suppose, a fine bed of lettuce in your garden. From no apparent cause,
some morning, you find it all withered. You pull up one of the plants,
and it proves to have no root; the white grub has cut it away. Or you
have a nursery of young fruit trees for your orchard. The terrible worm
passes that way, and your nursery is good for nothing but fire-wood. Or
you have sown several acres with wheat or rape, you have made a
considerable outlay for fertilizer and labor; but there is promise of a
handsome harvest with large profit to you. The larva of the June-bug
works its way up from the depths, and then good-bye to your harvest;
the stalks dry up as they stand, having no roots left to sustain them.
When this formidable worm invades a country, famine would surely follow
were it not that traffic facilities make possible the speedy
importation of provisions from other lands. We live in a progressive
age and, thanks to the means of transport and to the briskness of
trade, people do not die of hunger in a province whose fields have been
devastated by the white grub. They do not die of hunger, but what woe
follows in the wake of the devouring larva! Year in and year out, it
destroys millions of francs’ worth of crops in France alone.
“The multitude of these little insects is truly terrifying. When they
invade a field, the earth, undermined in all directions, loses its
firmness and yields under the pressure of the foot. One year, in the
department of the Sarthe, the ravages became so serious that it was
necessary to undertake a systematic destruction of the pest. The
June-bug was hunted on a large scale, and sixty thousand decaliters
were gathered in, each decaliter containing about five thousand
insects. Thus the total number taken amounted to three hundred
millions. To give you some idea of the immensity of this number I will
add that if you should try to count those three hundred million
insects, one by one, it would take you more than twenty years, working
ten hours a day.
“In the department of the Lower Seine there was at one time found to be
an average of twenty-three larvæ of the June-bug to the square meter,
or two hundred and thirty thousand devourers to each hectare. A hectare
will raise a crop of one hundred thousand beets. Thus each beet was
gnawed by at least two worms. Allowing eighty thousand rape-stalks to
the hectare, we find each stalk feeding three worms, or very nearly. It
is clear that under these desperate conditions no rape-seed oil or
beet-root sugar can be produced. Every plant perishes. In the single
year 1866 the Lower Seine lost from this cause about twenty-five
million francs.
“In 1868, in different parts of France, notably in Normandy, the
multiplication of June-bugs was so great as to spread alarm throughout
the rural districts. Trees were completely stripped of their foliage,
and in the evening, when the insects fly abroad, such clouds of them
encumbered the atmosphere as to make it difficult to walk about. Almost
everywhere there were June-bug hunts organized, and those who gathered
the insects received from the public treasury from four to six francs
per hundred liters. In one place alone, Fontaine-Mallet, near Havre,
there were gathered four thousand and fifty-nine kilograms of the
insects in four days. The school-master sent his pupils out after
June-bugs, and four hundred and forty kilograms was the result of one
day’s collecting. All these insects were carted to Havre by the
wagon-load and drowned in the sea. In certain communes they were
brought to the town hall in such quantities that there was no way of
disposing of them. The air reeked with the stench they made.
“It is said that in 1668 the June-bugs destroyed all the vegetation in
one county of Ireland, so that the country presented the dead
appearance of winter. The sound made by the insects’ mandibles in
browsing the foliage of the trees was like that of a carpenter’s saw,
and the hum of wings resembled the distant beating of drums. Enveloped
in clouds of insects and blinded by the living hail, the inhabitants
could hardly see to go about. The famine was horrible: the poor Irish
people were even obliged to eat the June-bugs to keep from starving.”
“Oh, how awful that must have been!” exclaimed the group of listeners.
“Yes, awful, indeed,” assented Uncle Paul, “and I have a few more
instances to relate, less lamentable than the Irish famine, it is true,
but still of a nature to show us how prodigious were the legions of
June-bugs in certain years. In 1832, in the neighborhood of Gisors, a
stage-coach became enveloped at nightfall in a cloud of these insects.
Blinded and terrified, the horses obstinately refused to go on. Finally
there was nothing to do but turn about and go back, so completely did
the humming swarm bar the way. Forty years ago the June-bugs descended
upon Mâcon after ravaging the vineyards in its vicinity. They were
scooped up in the streets by the shovelful, and to make one’s way
through the cloud of beetles one had to clear a passage by the
energetic brandishing of a stick.
“Since the June-bug is so redoubtable a scourge to agriculture, since
it is a foe with which one must reckon most seriously, how, you will
ask, is it to be got rid of? There is one way, and only one: collecting
and destroying both grubs and beetles. We can count to a certain extent
on the help of moles, hedge-hogs, ravens, crows, and magpies, all of
which hunt the larvæ, especially in newly ploughed fields; and we can
also count on the aid of a host of birds such as shrikes, sparrows, and
others, which devour the beetles; but the number of the enemy is so
great that this destruction by natural means does not always suffice.
We must then lend an energetic hand ourselves. Which of the two is to
enjoy the fruits of the earth, man or June-bug? Man, if he will but
bestir himself and wage unceasing war on both the insect and its larva.
“The white grub, as I told you, bores into the earth more or less
deeply according to the season. In winter it goes down half a meter, a
depth at which it is protected from the frost. Upon the return of
milder weather it comes up again, to be within reach of the roots; and
from the first of April it can be found by digging down twenty
centimeters. A favorable time, therefore, is chosen for turning up the
earth and bringing the larvæ to the surface, whereupon women and
children, following after the plough, gather up the white grubs in the
furrows. A single hectare has been known to yield in this way from two
hundred to three hundred kilograms of worms. The vermin are pressed
down into the earth with lime, the whole making an excellent manure,
and the enemy of harvests thus serves to accelerate their growth.”