192 



. any of tliem, and have never seen any since. I have just re- 

 ferred to your paper on the barley insect, and am somewhat in- 

 chned to behevc that your pupa was tliat of the veritable Hes- 

 sian Fly ; and that the parasite which some of them evolved 

 was Say's Ceraphron destructor. I have planted barley in my 

 garden this spring, and find that the Hessian Fly (which I have 

 seen this spring) has no objection to laying eggs upon it, but 

 she evidently prefers wheat. As we do not know of any other 

 insect of habits like those of the Hessian Fly, is it unreasonable 

 to suppose that the latter attacks barley in New Hampshire ? 

 I am by no means confident in this conjecture, and the differ- 

 ence in the situation of the larva3 obliges us perhaps for the 

 present to believe that your barley insect is a different species 

 from 0. destructor^ though nearly allied to it. 



HERRICK TO HARRIS. 



New Haven, Aug. 17, 1841. 



Among the wheat which ripened in my garden, in July last, 

 I have found a considerable number of minute reddish larvre, 

 such as I have seen in former years. They were within the 

 glumes of the half-ripe and ripening grain, but they appeared 

 to do no special mischief. They are small, the largest (and 

 apparently full-grown) being only about one twentieth of an 

 inch long. I have examined them very carefully with high 

 magnifiers. From a comparison of the larvaj, I have little 

 doiibt that this belongs to some species of Lasioj^tera or Cecido- 

 myia. What the parent insect is, I know not, but presume* it 

 to be one of those minute Lasiopterce,, which I have often seen 

 in Jmie, about sunrise, hovering around the spikes of wheat 

 while flowering. 



My barley was but little visited by insects. On a fcAV stalks 

 I found larvfE of the Hessian Fly. I have also seen between 



