INSECTS. 



when I was a boy. I want to know whether they are new 

 creations or a new development of creatures that existed 

 years ago. We do not know what to make of it, and we get 

 irritated over the matter. We go into our gardens some- 

 times in the middle of a very hot day and we find our cu- 

 cumber plants all cut down and the leaves lying on the 

 ground and drying up. This ought not so to be. I was con 

 versing with an aged man a few years since, who said he dis- 

 tinctly remembered when there was no such thing as a rose 

 bug; now, they sometimes come in such clouds that we can 

 hardly see. I should like to know whether entomology can 

 explain this, or is it because our soil has been worked over so 

 long that it is bringing up insects that did not exist there 

 years ago. I see the very great importance of this sub- 

 ject, and want to get more light upon it. If we can go to 

 work and kill off these insects by millions, it would be a great 

 benefit to us. 



Mr. Gould. I do not think that there is any evidence of a 

 new creation of insects. Almost all the insects which have 

 infested this country have been directly traceable to importa- 

 tions from abroad. The origin of the Hessian fly is we.ll 

 known. It was brought over here in straw by the Hessian 

 troops at the opening of the Revolutionary War. Prof. 

 Smith has said, very correctly, that four or five years ago 

 there were no parasites of the wheat midge known in this 

 country. The history of that insect is exceedingly interest- 

 ing, and perhaps will illustrate the point which the gentleman 

 inquires about. 



The wheat midge made its first appearance on this side the 

 ocean in 1830, in Canada, and it was found on investigation, 

 to have come from the emptying of a straw bed which was 

 brought over by a Scotch emigrant. From that time it spread 

 in a circle of about thirty miles a year until it has embraced 

 nearly the whole of the wheat region. The elderly gentle- 

 men here will recollect the time when their wives and moth- 

 ers would ordinarily make rye and Indian bread for the fami- 

 ly, but when the minister or the schoolmaster was coming to 

 tea, they felt it to be their duty to have a barrel of Troy City 

 15 



