A name applied to any insect that appears in June.

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1836.  I should admire to bet some gentleman ten dollars on the bay. A Mr. Wash … snapped me up like a duck does a June-bug.—W. T. Porter, ed., ‘A Quarter Race in Kentucky,’ etc., p. 15 (1846).

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1836.  He [the cougar] was down upon me like a night-hawk upon a June bug.—‘Col. Crockett in Texas,’ p. 154 (Phila.).

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1836.  That notion played directly into the hands of [Mr. Adams’s] opponents, and they hopped upon it, to use a homely phrase, like a duck on a June-bug.—Mr. Hawes, House of Repr., May 5: Congressional Globe, p. 349.

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1840.  The editors came down upon him like a bat upon a June-bug.—Daily Pennant, St. Louis, May 29.

5

1849.  

                        ——Far along,
From cask to cask, the sweetened mint among,
Leaps the live liquor! Not from one lone jug,
But every barrel now hath lost its bung,
And ‘Old Rye’ answers from his rusty mug,
On which ‘the boys’ do light ‘like duck on a June bug.’
Knick. Mag., xxxiv. 81 (July).    

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1854.  Beating June-bugs from roses is his morning repast.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ iii. 282.

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1854.  A temper as soft and cerulean as a cloudless sky in the month of June-bugs and roses.—Id., iv. 138.

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1855.  He is a rare companion—a strange fellow, with a clever French faculty, of making a dish out of a June bug.—W. G. Simms, ‘The Forayers,’ p. 524 (N.Y.).

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1862.  He has lighted upon [General] Scott as a hawk lights upon a June bug.—Corr., The Standard, Dec. 12. (N.E.D.)

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