256 [Senate 



Its Foreign History. 



The first distinct and unequivocal account of the wheat-fly, of 

 which I am aware, is that given by Mr. Christopher Gullet, in 1771, 

 in a letter to Dr. Matty " On the effects of elder in preserving growing 

 plants from the insects and flies," which letter was published in the 

 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society the following year.* 



* So long ago as the year 1768, Col. La,ngdon Carter, of Virginia, transmitted to the 

 An*erican Philosophical Society a paper entitled " Observations concerning the fly- 

 weevil that destroys the wheat;" vs^hich was published in the first volume of the So- 

 ciety's Transactions, 2d edition, pages 274-287. The account here given, is in nearly all 

 its particulars so strikingly applicable to the wheat-fly, that so much of it as relates to 

 the insect itself merits an introduction in this place. He rather quaintly remarks, " In a 

 pleasant evening, after the sun was down, and every thing serenely calm, I found the 

 rascals extremely busy amongst my ears, and really very numerous. I immediately in- 

 closed some of them in a light loose handkerchief; and by the magnifiers of my tele- 

 scope, I took occasion minutely to examine them. They are a pale brownish moth, with 

 little trunks or bodies, some trifle shorter than their wings; and as some of their little 

 bodies appeared bulging as if loaded; I applied the pressure of a fine straw upon 

 them, and saw them squirt out, one after another, a number of little things which I 

 took to be eggs, some more, some less: some emitted fifteen or twenty of them; and 

 others appeared extremely lank in their little trunks, which I could not make dis- 

 charge anything like an egg. Whether they had done this in the field before, or were 

 of the male kind, I could not tell; but from this discovery I concluded that there need 

 not be above two or three flies to an ear of corn, to lay eggs enough to destroy the 

 greatest crop. * * * It is with much propriety called a weevil, as it de- 

 stroys the wheat even in our granaries ; though it is not of the kind termed by natu- 

 ralists the curculio; of which they have given a very long list; for it is not like a bug; 

 it carries no cases for its wings ; neither has it any feelers, with which the curculio 

 is always distinguished; and perhaps (as I fancy it will turn out in the course of this 

 letter that they never attack grain when hard) they really have no occasion for such 

 feelers. For from the make of it, to my judgment, it appears an impossibility that it 

 should ever perforate into a hard grain, being furnished with nothing in nature, from 

 the most minute examination by glasses, that could make such a perforation; and 

 seems indeed a fly itself, consisting of nothing sensible to the slightest touch with the 

 finger, nor to the eye assisted with glasses, leaving only a little dry pale brown glossy 

 dust on being squeezed." 



I doubt not but that on perusing this extract, almost every reader who is conversant 

 with our wheat-fly, which also is so frequently called " the weevil," will feel confi- 

 dent that it is the same insect to which Col. Carter alludes. Yet if his account be 

 more particularly observed, we gather from it some characters which assure us that i^ 

 was not the wheat-fly which he examined. Although he uses the terms moth and Jly 

 as synonymous, and no where tells us whether his specimens had four or only two 

 wings, yet he could scarcely have spoken of the lively orange color of our wheat-fly 

 as " pale brownish ;" and what is yet more conclusive, his insect, on being pressed 

 between the fingers, left "a little dry pale brown glossy dust;" whereas the wheat- 

 fly leaves no mark upon the fingers, unless it be actually crushed, in which case its 



