262 [Senate 



ITS DOMESTIC HISTORY. 



It will be unnecessary to particularly' specify the various notices of 

 this insect, that have appeared in the different agricultural papers of 

 the Northern States during the last twelve years. The more impor- 

 . tant and valuable of these may be found in the several volumes of 

 the Cultivator and of the New-England Farmer, An excellent sum- 

 mary of the history and habits of the wheat-fly, both in this country 

 and abroad, is also given in Dr, Harris's Report on the Insects of 

 Massachusetts, p. 437-444. Mr. Gaylord's paper on injurious in- 

 sects briefly notices this species {Trans. JV. F, State Agric. Society ^ 

 1843, vol. iii. p. 145-147.) 



With the prominent facts that have been laid before the public by 

 our agricultural periodicals, every intelligent farmer is already fa- 

 miliar. The great difficulty experienced by persons but little conver- 

 sant with zoological science, in determining what this wheat-worm 

 really was, forms a striking feature in the earlier notices that appeared 

 respecting it. Thus, by some it was for a time regarded as an animal- 

 cula of the vibrio genus, analogous to the "eels" generated in vinegar 

 and paste. By others, and quite extensively, it was pronounced to 

 be a weevil, and this very iijiproper name is to this day often applied- 

 to it. Others, still, deemed it to be "Monsieur Tonson come again,'^' 

 considering it as a return of the Hessian fly to a section of the coun- 

 try from which it had long been absent. It would be easy to point out 

 how erroneous each of these opinions are -, but I deem it w^holly un- 

 necessary, as the public mind is now no longer distracted upon this 

 subject ; and the correct view, that this insect is a fly, peculiar in its- 

 habits, and differing from any of those previously known in this- 

 country, universally prevails. 



It is not improbable but that one or both of the species of the wheat- 

 fly may have been present in this country, in limited numbers, many 

 years before it was distinctly noticed. In truth, common as this in- 

 sect still is in this district, if our farmers, guided by the knowledge 

 they have acquired of it, were not zealously searching for it in every 

 field, I much doubt whether it would be at all observed here at the 

 present day. And often too when a careful examination of the grow- 

 ing grain leads to a belief that the crop is scarcely infested, an in- 

 spection of the threshing-floor, or of the screenings of the fanning- 



