440 INSECTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



tain the amount of injury done by either of them alone. The 

 wheat-fly is said to have been first seen in America about the 

 year 1828,* in the northern part of Vermont, and on the borders 

 of Lower Canada. From these places its ravages have gradually 

 extended, in various directions, from year to year. A consider- 

 able part of Upper Canada, of New York, New Hampshire, and 

 of Massachusetts have been visited by it ; and, in 1834, it ap- 

 peared in Maine, which it has traversed, in an easterly course, at 

 the rate of twenty or thirty miles a year. The country, over 

 which it has spread, has continued to suffer more or less from 

 its alarming depredations, the loss by which has been found to 

 vary from about one tenth part to nearly the whole of the annual 

 crop of wheat ; nor has the insect entirely disappeared in any 

 place, till it has been starved out by a change of agriculture, or 

 by the substitution of late-sown spring wheat for the other va- 

 rieties of grain. Many communications on this destructive insect 

 have appeared in " The Genesee Farmer," and in " The Culti- 

 vator," some of them written by the late Judge Buel, by whom, 

 as well as by the editors of " The Yankee Farmer," rewards 

 were offered for the discovery of the means to prevent its rav- 

 ages. Premiums have also been proposed, for the same end, by 

 the " Kennebec County Agricultural Society," in Maine, which 

 were followed by the publication, in " The Maine Farmer," of 

 three " Essays on the Grain Worm," presented to that Society. 

 These essays were reprinted in the seventeenth volume of the 

 " New England Farmer," wherein, as well as in some other vol- 

 umes of the same work, several other articles on this insect may 

 be found. From these sources, and, more especially, from some 

 interesting letters wherewith I have been favored by a lady lately 

 resident in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, the foregoing and fol- 

 lowing statements are chiefly derived. A continued series of 

 observations, conducted with care, and with a due regard to dates, 

 is still wanted to complete the history of the various insects 

 which are injurious to grain in this country. Could Mr. Herrick, 



* Judge Duel's Report in " The Cultivator," Vol. VI., p. 26; and " New Eng- 

 land Farmer," Vol. IX., p. 42. Mr. Jewett says, that its first appearance in 

 western Vermont occurred in 1820. See " New England Farmer," Vol. XIX., 

 p. 301. 



