PLAGUE OF ANIMALS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21186, 5 November 1938, Page 15

PLAGUE OF ANIMALS

COCKCHAFERS IN EUROPE Recent reports from Denmark told of vast swarms of cockchafers, or May bugs, wrote Professor C. M. Monge recently in the Manchester Guardian. The rounded bodies of these insects carpeted the roads of Southern Jutland, and driving over their squashed bodies became dangerous. The farmers were alarmed at the prospect of damage to crops, and the Danish Government offered a reward of some four shillings for every pound of dead cockchafers. In England also, notably in the Forest of Dean, cockchafers have been unusually abundant. There is nothing unprecedented about this. For a long time it has been known that in Central Europe these beetles appear in countless numbers every three or four years. In one area there has been a regular three-year cycle for at least sixty years. Moreover, every fifteen years there is an even greater increase.