INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 171 



reached 200 miles from its original station. I must ob- 

 serve, however, that some accounts state its progress at 

 first to have been very slow, at the rate only of seven 

 miles per annum, and the damage inconsiderable ; and 

 that the wheat crops were not materially injured by it 

 before the year 1788. Though these insect hordes tra- 

 verse such a tract of country in the course of the year, 

 their flights are not more than five or six feet at a time. 

 Nothing intercepts them in their destructive career, nei- 

 ther mountains nor the broadest rivers. They were seen 

 to cross the Delaware like a cloud. The numbers of this 

 fly were so great, that in wheat-harvest the houses swarm- 

 ed with them to the extreme annoyance of the inhabitants. 

 They filled every plate or vessel that was in use ; and 

 five hundred were counted in a single glass tumbler ex- 

 posed to them a few minutes with a little beer in it*. 



America suffers also in its wheat and maize from the 

 attack of an insect of a different order ; which, for what 

 reason I know not, is called the chintz-bug-fly. It ap- 

 pears to be apterous, and is said in scent and colour to 

 resemble the bed-bug. They travel in immense columns 

 from field to field, like locusts destroying every thing as 

 they proceed : but their injuries are confined to the states 

 south of the 40th degree of north latitude''. From this 

 account the depredator here noticed should belong to the 

 tribe of Geocorisce, Latr. ; but it seems very difficult to 

 conceive how an insect that lives by suction, and has no 

 mandibles, could destroy these plants so totally. 



"When the wheat blossoms, another marauder, to which 

 Mr. Marsham first called the attention of the public, takes 



Encyclop(.cd, Britaiin. viii. 489-!)o. 

 ^ Young's Aimah of Agiiciillti/f, xi. 471. 



