“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.