396 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. 



" Observations concerning the fly-weevil that destroys wheat." 

 These were printed in the first volume of the "Transactions" 

 of the Society, and were followed by some remarks on the 

 subject by "the Committee of Husbandry." This is the earli- 

 est authentic account of the insect that I have met with. The 

 Committee stated that "it was said the injury of wheat from 

 these flies began in North Carolina about forty years before, — 

 and that they had extended gradually from Carolina into Vir- 

 ginia, Maryland, and the lower counties of Delaware, but had 

 not then penetrated into Pennsylvania or passed the Delaware." 

 They remarked, moreover, that the insects " appeared to be of 

 the same kind with those that do the hke mischief in Europe, 

 as described to Mr. Duhamel by a gentleman of Angoumois." 

 Mr. Louis A. G. Bosc, who was sent by the French govern- 

 ment, in 1796, to this country, where he spent several years, 

 found the Alucila cerealella " so abundant in Carolina as to 

 extinguish a candle when he entered his granary in the night." * 

 This fly-weevil, or little grain-moth, has spread from North 

 Carolina and Virginia, where its depredations were first ob- 

 served, into Kentucky, and the southern parts of Ohio and 

 Indiana, and probably more or less throughout the wheat 

 region of the adjacent States, between the thirty-sixth and 

 fortieth degrees of north latitude. But these are not the 

 extreme limits of its occasional depredations, as it has been 

 found even in New England, where, however, its propagation 

 seems to have been limited by the length and severity of the 

 winter. Wheat, barley, oats, and Indian corn, suffer alike 

 from it, the last especially when kept unprotected more than 

 six or eight months. Several essays on this insect have ap- 

 peared in agricultural journals, none of which, however, were 

 known to me when my first account of the Angoumois moth 

 was written. One of these is an elaborate article by Edward 

 Ruffin, Esq., of Hanover county, Virginia, printed in " The 

 Farmers' Register" for November, 1833. The object of the 

 writer is to prove, by a series of experiments, that there is a 



* Encyclopedic Methodique. Agriculture. Tome V., p. 243. — Mr. Bosc, a 

 contributor to this work, resided some time at Wilmington, North Carolina. 



