No. 105.] 259 



agricultural papers it is still spoken of as solely 'the Tipula Tritici of 

 Mr. Kirty. 



In this article, and another presented about a year afterwards, 

 (Trans. Lin. Soc. vol. v. p. 96), Mr. Kirby gives a large number of 

 most interesting and valuable observations upon this insect, the cor- 

 rectness of which, generally, more recent investigations have fully 

 attested. With regard to its abundance at that time, he says he 

 could scarcely pass through a wheat field, in which some florets of 

 «very ear were not inhabited by the larvae ; and in a field of fifteen 

 acres, which he carefully examined, he calculated that the havoc 

 done by them would amount to five combs (twenty bushels). 



From this time we have met with no notices of the wheat-fly, ex- 

 <;ept occasional references to the articles above mentioned, until the 

 year 1828, when, and for a few of the following years, it again ap- 

 peared in such numbers and with such havoc in several of the coun- 

 ties of England and Scotland, as to elicit communications in the 

 magazines from several writers. In some districts of Scotland, its 

 devastations would seem to have approached in severity what has 

 been experienced upon this side of the Atlantic ; for " Mr. Gorrie 

 ■estimates the loss sustained by the farming interest in the Carse of 

 Crowrie (the rich alluvial district along the Isla and its tributaries in 

 Perth and Forfarshire} by the wheat-fly alone, at 20,000/. in 1827, 

 at 30,000/. iu 1828, and at 36,000/. in 1829" {Encyc. ofAg. 3d Lond. 

 ed. p. 820. § 5066). And Mr. Bell, writing from Perthshire, June 24, 

 1830, says, ^^ We are anxious to have the present cold weather con- 

 tinue for another ten days, to prevent the eggs from hatching, until 

 the wheat be sufficiently hardened and beyond the state which affords 

 nourishment to the maggot. Another year or two of the wheat-fly 

 will make two-thirds of the farmers here bankrupts," {Gardener's 

 Magazine, vol. vi. p. 495). Mr. Gorrie, in a letter dated at Annat 

 Gardens, Errol, Perthshire, Sept. 1828, {Loudon's Mag. of Mat. 

 Hid. vol. ii. p. 292) , solicits information " on the nature and mode 

 of propagation of a fly which has this year destroyed about one-third 

 of the late sown wheat all over this country." He describes a small 

 yellow -caterpillar, one-eighth of an inch long, as numerous in the 

 young ears of wheat, completely devouring the young milky grain, 

 becoming torpid in about twelve days, and in six days more chang- 

 ing to a small black fly. In a subsequent communication, August 



