ARTICLE XLV. — On the Insects injurious to the Wheat crop. 



The recent appearance of the Fly, in Upper Canada, having 

 occasioned a good deal of. anxiety, we have thought proper to 

 publish the following article, in order to give as wide a circulation 

 as possible to the Natural History of this destroyer of the staff of 

 life. The Wheat Midge, Cecidomya tritici, appears to be the 

 species which threatens our crops with the greatest amount of 

 damage. Its history has been known to Naturalists during the 

 last fifty years, but no effectual method has been discovered of 

 guarding against its ravages. There is but one way of arriving 

 at this much desired knowledge. It is by increasing the number 

 of qualified observers throughout the country. Were any argu- 

 ment necessary to establish the expediency of introducing the 

 study of Natural History into all the common schools throughout 

 the civilized world, the best would be that a creature barely visi- 

 ble to the naked eye may, under circumstances favourable to its 

 multiplication, scourge the nations with famine. We do not 

 know how to protect ourselves, and we never shall know until 

 we arrive at a more perfect insight into those laws of life which 

 regulate the introduction, increase and extermination of species. 

 Geology teaches us that th ere is a power in nature which destroys 

 not only individuals but even whole races. No doubt there is a 

 power which, could man discover it, would enable him to slay the 

 Wheat Midge, as it has in by-gone ages silenced for ever the 

 Ichthyosaurus, the Mastodon, or any other of the buried thousands 

 of the old lost worlds. " It is not enough that a few men know at 

 what season the Wheat Midge lays her egg, the time when that 

 egg produces the worm-like larva, or when the pupa bursts to 

 liberate the perfected insect, the parent of new swarms : all this 

 has been for the last half century but a small item in the journal 

 of the Entomologist ; our only hope is to have thousands of 

 observers of nature where there are now scarcely half a dozen ; and 

 surely when the vast interests depending upon the wheat crop are 

 at stake, there is a sufficient reason to encourage the only science 

 through which the means of saving it can be approached. 



We regret that not having duly apportioned our space, much that 

 we had prepared on this subject, together with some engravings 

 already executed, must be excluded from the present number. 



The following is from the Report of the Commissioner of 

 Patents at Washington for the year 1854 ; Department of Agri- 

 culture. 



