262 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



for 1817. It is a little larger than our wheat-fly, 

 more slender in the body, has longer legs, and is 

 not orange, but black and fulvous. The female 

 deposits from one to eight or more eggs on a single 

 plant of wheat, between the sheath of the inner leaf 

 and the stem nearest the roots ; in which situation, 

 with its head towards the root or first joint, the 

 young larva passes the winter, eating into the stem, 

 and causing it to break.* 



The devastation committed by the Hessian fly 

 seems to have been first observed in 1776, and it 

 was erroneously supposed that the insect was con- 

 veyed among straw by the Hessian troops from Ger- 

 many. It was first noticed in the wheat fields of 

 Long Island, from which it spread gradually at the 

 rate of fifteen or twenty miles round; and in 1789 it 

 had advanced two hundred miles from its original 

 station in Long Island. Other accounts state that it 

 did not travel more than seven miles annually, and 

 did little serious damage before 1788. Their num- 

 bers seem almost incredible. The houses in the 

 infested districts swarmed with them to so great a 

 deo-ree, that every vessel was filled with them; five 

 hundred were actually counted on a glass tumbler 

 which had been set down for a few minutes with a 

 little beer in it. They v/ere observed crossing the 

 Delaware river like a cloud ; and even mountains do 

 not seem to interrupt their progress.! ^^^ can well 

 understand, therefore, that so formidable a ravager 

 should have caused a very great alarm; and even our 

 own government was in fear lest the insect should be 

 imported. The privy council, indeed, sat day after 

 day in deep consultation what measures should be 

 adopted to ward oft' the danger of a calamity more to 

 be dreaded, as they well knew, than the plague or 

 the pestilence. Expresses were sent off in all direc- 



* Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. i, p. 228. 

 t Kirby and Spence, vol. i, p. 172. 



