198 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



I have tried myself to compare as much as possible the different pub- 

 lications quoted by Dr. A. Fitch, and arrived at these conclusions : 



i. That it is impossible that the fly could have been imported by the 

 Hessian troops. 



2. That it is very probable that the fly was here before the war. 



3. That the fly was not known to exist in Germany before 1857. 



It has been entirely overlooked that Dr. A. Fitch states himself that 

 he has been unable to fill an important desideratum, to make his proofs 

 conclusive ones. He says : " We have searched in vain for the date of 

 the embarkation of the troops or the number of days occupied by them 

 in crossing the sea." There were indeed long before published those 

 data, but in two works which even to-day are not to be found in any 

 library here.* Both these works and the official manuscript report are 

 used by Dr. Wagner. But there exist newer publications, all easily 

 accessible here, but strangely enough, appear never to have been con- 

 sulted, t 



/". // is impossible that the fly could have been imported by the Hes- 

 sian troops. 



Dr. A. Fitch arrived, after his study of the habits of the fly, to the 

 conclusion " that there is but one mode and but one month in the year in 

 which this insect could probably have been conveyed to this country at 

 that time, to wit, in straw landed upon our coast in August." (p. 29 ) 



Everybody will agree that Dr. Fitch's reasoning is acute and to the 

 point. As his monograph is known by every student, it is not necessary 

 to repeat in full his conclusions (p 8-9). But he has forgotten in his 

 calculations that the pupa state of the fly has in the summer only the 

 duration of two months or less, and that every ship for a voyage from 

 Europe, required on an average nearly four months ; and that straw 



* The Biography of the General von Ochs, by L. von Hohenhausen, Cassel, 1827, 

 and F. Pfister die Fahrt der ersten hessischen Ileeres abtheilung von Portsmouth nach 

 N. York : Zeitschr. der Vereins fuer hessische geschichte und Landeskunde, Tom. ii., 

 Cassel, 1840. 



t Max von Eelking: Die deutschen Huelfstruppcn im Nordamerikanischen Befreiun- 

 gekrisge, 1776-1783, Hannover, 1863, 2 vol. 



By the same author : The biography of General Riedesel, Leipzig, 1856, 3 vol. 



Friedrich Kapp : Der Soldatenhandel deutscher Fuersten nach Amerika, Berlin, 

 1864. 



Bancroft's History, vol. viii., ix. 



