170 



HARRIS TO DOUBLEDAY. 



Cambridge, March 20, 1846. 



And now, as business presses hard on me, I must improve 

 the present moriient to make some remarks on the specimens of 

 insects sent to you, for exhibition to the Enghsh Entomologists. 

 Please to open my " Treatise " at page 365, near the bottom of 

 which you will see the words — " Fly-weevil that destroys 

 wheat." This is, or was the Virginia name of the little moths 

 sent you. Specimens of tliis same " fly-weevil that destroys 

 wheat," which has done, and still continues to do incalculable 

 mischief in the granaries and wheat mills and storehouses of this 

 country, are in your possession, and I hope in good condition. 

 The insect has been known to the farmers and millers of our 

 wheat districts nearly a hundred years, and yet a correct scien- 

 tific description of it has never been published here, unless the 

 account of the foreign insect contained in my " Treatise " be 

 considered as applicable to it. Wheat is not raised or ground 

 in this vicinity. We get our flour mostly from New York and 

 Baltimore ; hence the insect was unseen by me when my book 

 was written. Since then I have seen it, in all its stages, and 

 have had the moths living before me, and have observed their 

 manners, in confinement it is true, but where they have propa- 

 gated for more than a year. Sometime before writing the arti- 

 cle above referred to, I had come to the conclusion that the 

 fly-weevil of Virginia was a co-species, and perhaps, identical 

 with the Angoumois moth ; and, if I mistake not, I pointed out 

 in a letter to you, the synonymy of the European insect, and 

 the blunders of entomologists about it. Before publishing a 

 better account of the American insect, I wanted to know what 

 the best British Lepidopterists would call it, and whether they 

 would recognize it as a European species, without disclosing to 

 tliem what I knew and what I suspected about it. Even to you 

 I did not disclose my views, because I hoped to have your own 

 opinion uninfluenced by mine. I regret only to have received 



