HISTORY OF THE HESSIAN FLY. 569 



appears, howevei*, that the same insect, or one exactly like 

 it in habits, had been long known in the vicinity of Geneva ; 

 an account of it may be found in Duhamel's " Practical 

 Treatise of Husbandry," * and in a communication f made 

 to the Duke of Dorset, in 1788, by the Royal Society of 

 Agriculture of France. 



In the year 1833 the wheat in Austria and in Hungary 

 was considerably injured by an insect of the same kind, 

 supposed to be the Hessian fly by the Baron Kollar.| More- 

 over, Mr. E. C. Herrick, of New Haven, Connecticut, has 

 published an account § of the discovery of the true Hessian 

 fly, by Mr. James D. Dana, in Minorca, near Toulon in 

 France, and in the vicinity of Naples, in the year 1834. 

 Nothing has yet been found relative to the existence of the 

 Hessian fly in America before the Revolution. It was first 

 observed in the year 1776, in the neighborhood of Sir Wil- 

 liam Howe's debarkation on Staten Island, and at Flat Bush, 

 on the west end of Long Island. Having multiplied in 

 these places, the insects gradually spread over the southern 

 parts of New York and Connecticut, and continued to pro- 

 ceed inland at the rate of fifteen or twenty miles a year. 

 They reached Saratoga, two hundred miles from their origi- 

 nal station, in 1789. Dr. Chapman says, that they Avere 

 found west of the Alleghany Mountains in 1797 ; fi'om their 

 progress through the country, having apparently advanced 

 about thirty miles every summer. Wheat, rye, barley, and 

 even timothy grass, were attacked by them ; and so great 

 were their ravages in the larva state, that the cultivation of 

 wheat was abandoned in many places where they had estab- 

 lished themselves. II 



* Page 90 (4to, Lond., 1759). See also his Elements of Agriculture, Vol. I. p. 

 269 (8vo, Lond., 1664). 



t Encyclopgedia Britannica, and Dobson's Encyclopcedla, Vol. VIII., Article 

 Hessian Fly. 



\ Treatise, pp. 118, 119. 



§ Sillimaii's American Journal of Science, Vol. XLI. p. 153. 



II EncyclopjEdia Britannica, and Dobson's Encyclopcedia, Vol. VIII., Article 

 Hessian Fly. 



72 



