172 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTST. 



that some accounts state its progress at first to have 

 been very slow, at the rate only of seven miles per 

 annum, and the damage inconsiderable ; and that the 

 wheat crops were not materially injured by it before 

 the year 1788. Though these insect hordes traverse 

 such a tract of country in the conrse of the year, their 

 flights are not more than five or six feet at a time. 

 Nothing intercepts them in their destructive career, 

 neither mountains nor the broadest rivers. They were 

 seen to cross the Delaware like a cloud. The numbers 

 of this fly were so great, that in wheat-harvest the 

 houses swarmed with them to the extreme annoyance 

 of the inhabitants. They filled every plate or vessel 

 that was in use ; and five hundred were counted in a 

 single glass tumbler exposed to them a few minutes 

 with a little beer in it\ 



America sutfers also in its wheat and maize from the 

 attack of an insect of a different order ; which, for 

 what reason I know not, is called the chintz-bug-fly. 

 It appears to be apterous, and is said in scent and co- 

 lour to resemble the bed-bug. They travel in immense 

 columns from field to field, like locusts destroying 

 every thing as they proceed ; but their injuries are 

 confined to the states south of the 40th degree of north 

 latitude''. From this account the depredator here 

 noticed should belong to the tribe of Cimicidm ; but it 

 seems very difficult to conceive how an insect that lives 

 by suction, and has no mandibles, could destroy these 

 plants so totally. 



When the wheat blossoms, another marauder, to 



" Encyclopoed, Brilann. viii. 489-95. 



* Young's Annals of Agriculture,^ \\, 471. 



