50 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



SivefJish Transactions^ proved that Linne was not mis- 

 taken in referring it to the former tribe. 



The second instance of the insufficiency of popular 

 description is even more extraordinary. In 1 788 an alarm 

 was excited in this country by the probability of import- 

 ing, in cargoes of wheat from North America, the insect 

 known by the name of the Hessian fly, whose dreadful 

 ravages will be adverted to hereafter. However the in- 

 sect tribes are in general despised, they had on that oc- 

 casion ample revenge. ^The privy council sat day after 

 day anxiously debating what measures should be adopt- 

 ed to ward off the danger of a calamity, more to be 

 dreaded, as they well knew, than the plague or pesti- 

 lence. Expresses were sent off in all directions to the 

 officers of the customs at the different outports respecting 

 the examination of cargoes — dispatches written to the 

 ambassadors in France, Austria, Prussia, and America, 

 to gain that information of the want of which they were 

 now so sensible : and so important was the business 

 deemed, that the minutes of council and the documents 

 collected from all quarters fill upwards of two hundred 

 octavo pages''. Fortunately England contained one il- 

 lustrious naturalist, the most authentic source of infor- 

 mation on all subjects which connect Natural History 

 with Agriculture and the Arts, to whom the privy council 

 had the wisdom to apply ; and it was by Sir Joseph 

 Banks's entomological knowledge, and through his sug- 

 gestions, that they were at length enabled to form some 

 kind of judgement on the subject. This judgement was 



Swartz in Ko7igL Vet. Ac Nya. land. ix. 40. Plate XXIII. Fig. 10. 

 Young's Annals of Agricidture, xi. 406. 



