DIPTERA. 445 



Our agricultural papers contain some accounts of an insect or 

 of insects much larger than the maggots of the wheat-fly, growing 

 to the length of three eighths of an inch or more, and devouring 

 the grain in the ear, and after it is harvested. The insects to 

 which I allude have received the names of wheat-worms, gray- 

 worms, and brown weevils ; and, although these different names 

 may possibly refer to two or more distinct species, I am inclined 

 to think that all of them are intended for only one kind of insect. 

 Sometimes this has also been called the grain-worm ; whereby it 

 becomes somewhat difficult to separate the accounts of its history 

 and depredations from those of the Cecidomyia, or wheat-insect, 

 described in the foregoing pages. It may, however, very safely 

 be asserted that the wheat-worm of the western part of New- 

 York and of the northern part of Pennsylvania is entirely distinct 

 from the maggots of our wheat-fly, and that it does not belong to 

 the same order of insects. From the description of it, published 

 in the sixth volume of " The Cultivator,"* by Mr. Willis Gay- 

 lord, this depredator appears to be a caterpillar, or span-worm, 

 being provided with twelve feet, six of which are situated near 

 each extremity of its body. Like other span-worms, or Geome- 

 ters, it has the power of spinning and suspending itself by a 

 thread. Mr. Gaylord says that it is of a yellowish brown or 

 butternut color ; that it not only feeds on the kernel in the milky 

 state, but also devours the germinating end of the ripened grain, 

 without, however, burying itself within the hull ; and that it is 

 found in great numbers, in the chaff, when the grain is threshed. 

 He says, moreover, that it has been known for years in the west- 

 ern part of New York ; and that it is not so much the new ap- 

 pearance of this insect, as its increase, which has caused the 

 present alarm respecting it. The transformations and the appear- 

 ance of this insect in its perfected state have not yet been de- 

 scribed. Mr. Nathaniel Sill, of Warren, Pennsylvania, has given 

 a somewhat different description of it.f On threshing his winter- 

 wheat, immediately after harvest, he found among the screenings 

 a vast army of this new enemy. He says that it was a caterpillar, 

 about three eighths of an inch in length, when fully grown, and 



* Page 43. t " The Cultivator," Vol. VI., p. 21. 



