402 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. 



to minute black ichneumon-flies. These have not yet been 

 obtained from any of the samples of infected wheat or corn 

 that have come under my notice ; but, from the figures given 

 of them by Mr. Owen in " The Cultivator," for November, 

 1846, they appear evidently to be Chalcidian parasites, and 

 belong perhaps to the genus Pteromalus. Of these parasitical 

 flies he remarks, that " some farmers had noticed large num- 

 bers among the tailings of the winnowing machine." Where 

 they prevail, they doubtless contribute, in no small measure, 

 to check the increase of the moths. 



The Angoumois moth is unknown in England. Hence 

 specimens of the American insect, sent by me to my friend 

 the late Mr. Edward Doubleday, of the British Museum, in 

 December, 1845, were not immediately recognized by him and 

 by Mr. Curtis, the celebrated English entomologist. After- 

 wards, on consulting the work of Duponchel on the Lepido- 

 ptera of France, they identified my specimens as belonging to 

 the BufaUs cerealella, the true Angoumois grain-moth, described 

 and figured in that work. This identification is the more in- 

 teresting and satisfactory, from the circumstance that I had 

 not communicated to these gentlemen my belief that the 

 insects were the same, and had given to them no account of 

 the habits of my specimens, being desirous of obtaining their 

 opinion unbiassed by my own. I am not aware that any 

 attempt had been made by European naturalists, before the 

 publication of the first edition of this treatise, to determine 

 the modern genus to which the Angoumois moth belongs, or 

 to clear up and make known the synonymy of this species. 

 This labor seems to have been left to an American, remote 

 from the scene of the early and long continued depredations 

 of the insect, and deprived of the common facilities enjoyed 

 by European naturalists. 



