I\DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED PV INSECTS. 1/3 



which Mr. Marsham first called the attention of the 

 public, takes its turn <o make an attack upon it, under 

 the form of an orange-coloured gnat, which, introducing 

 its long retractile ovipositor into the centre of the co- 

 rolla, there deposits its eggs. These being hatched, 

 the larva;, perhaps by eating the pollen, prevent the 

 impregnation of the grain, and so in some seasons de- 

 stroy the twentieth part of the crop^. 



One would think, Avhen laid up in the barn or in the 

 granary, that wheat would be secure from injury ; but 

 even there the weevil (Calandra granayia, F.), in its 

 imago as well as in its larva state, devours it ; and 

 sometimes this pest becomes so infinitely numerous, 

 that a sensible man, engaged in the brewing trade, once 

 told me, speaking perhaps rather hyperbolically, that 

 they collected and destroyed them by bushels : and no 

 wonder, for a single pair of these destroyers may pro- 

 duce in one year above 6000 descendants. — There are 

 three other insects that attack the stored wheat, which 

 are more injurious to it than even the weevil. One is 

 a minute species of moth, (Tinea graneila, F.,) happily 

 not much if at all known in this country ; of which 

 Leeuwenhoek has given us a full history under the 

 name of the wolf. Another is a species of the same 

 genus, at present not named, which, as we are informed 

 by Du Hamel, at one time committed dreadful ravages 

 in the province of Angoumois in France. The third is 

 Trogosita caraboides, F., a kind of beetle, the grub of 

 which called Cadel/e, Olivier tells us, did more da- 

 mage to the housed grain in the southern provinces of 



* Tipula Trilid, K. belonging to Latreille's genns Ceddomyia. Mar^ 

 sham and Kirby in Linn, Trans, iii, 242-5. iv. 224-39. v. 96-110. 



