LEPIDOPTERA. 395 



through which it can make its escape easily when it becomes 

 a winged moth. The insects of the first, or summer brood, 

 come to maturity in about three weeks, remain but a short 

 time in the chrysalis state, and turn to winged moths in the 

 autumn, and at this time may be found, in the evening, in 

 great numbers, laying their eggs on the grain stored in barns 

 and granaries. The moth-worms of the second brood remain 

 in the grain through the winter, and do not change to winged 

 insects till the following summer, when they come out, fly into 

 the fields in the night, and lay their eggs on the young ears of 

 the growing grain. Although there seem to be two principal 

 broods in the course of a year, we are not to understand that 

 these are the only ones ; for French writers inform us, that 

 others are produced during the whole summer, and that the 

 production of the insects is accelerated or retarded by differ- 

 ences in the temperature of the air.* When damaged grain 

 is sown it comes up very thin; the infected kernels seldom 

 sprout, but the insects lodged in them remain alive, finish their 

 transformations in the field, and in due time come out of the 

 ground in the winged form. 



To the foregoing sketch must now be added an account of 

 an American grain-insect, which, in the first edition of this 

 treatise, I suggested would prove to be the same as the An- 

 goumois grain-mOth. Having since obtained some of these 

 American insects from various quarters, and having had a 

 colony of them living and increasing, for three years, under 

 my own eye, I find them to agree, in all essential particulars, 

 with the European species. Until, therefore, they are proved, 

 by actual comparison with perfect specimens of the latter, to 

 be absolutely distinct, I must consider it as next to certain 

 that they are identical, and that they have been introduced 

 into this country from Europe. Perhaps, hereafter, the mode 

 of their introduction may be as satisfactorily ascertained as 

 that of the Hessian fly. In the year 1768, Colonel Landon 

 Carter, of Sabine Hall, Virginia, communicated to the Amer- 

 ican Philosophical Society at Philadelphia some interesting 



* Olivier. Encyclopedic Methodique. Insectes. Tome IV., p. 115. 



