145 
Jt continued to increase in numbers until the year:1760, when it had 
become distributed over the adjacent provinces, swarming in grana- 
ries and fields. Its depredations were then frightful, the damage to 
wheat being not only so great as to deprive the inhabitants of the 
means of paying their rent and taxes, but threatening them with 
famine and pestilence from want of wholesome bread?. 
It seems to have continued to work more or less damage until 
1838, when Dr. Herpin,®? who was engaged in a study of the insect, 
stated that while it had disappeared somewhat from the central dis- 
tricts, it had continued to spread in others, and expressed fears of 
a recurrence of the troubles of 1760; but these anticipations do not 
seem to have been realized. On the contrary, the pest must have 
greatly decreased in number; for in 1867 Dr. Boisduval,! an emi- 
nent French authority, stated that it was not found by entomolo- 
gists of that time. The first to call public attention to its presence 
in America was Colonel Landon Carter, of Sabine Hall, Virginia, in 
a communication to the American Philosophical Society of Phila- 
delphia, in the year 1768. 
Colonel Landon’s communication was published in the Transac- 
tions of the Society, where it was followed by some remarks by the 
committee of husbandry, to the effect that “it was said that injuries 
to wheat by these fly weevils began in North Carolina about forty 
years previous,” which would carry the record back to about the 
year 1728. 
M. Louis A. G. Bosc, who was sent to this country by the French 
government in 1796, and resided for some time in Wilmington, N. 
C., found the moths so abundant in that state as to extinguish a 
candle when he entered his granary in the night. 
From these two states—Virginia and North Carolina—it seems to 
have spread over the state of Kentucky, and the southern part of 
Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and was found also in Massachusetts as 
early as the year 1844. 
The precise date of its first appearance in Illinois, it is obviously 
impossible to determine. 
It would naturally follow the direction of emigration, particularly 
where the climate was suited to its development, it being almost 
impossible to transport grain from districts where the insect is 
abundant, without including with it more or less in which the worms 
or eggs are present. 
Dr. Brackenridge Clemens states in the Proceedings of the Phila- 
delphia Academy of Natural Sciences for 1860, that he had obtained 
specimens from wheat distributed by the Department of Agriculture 
in the years 1854-55. 
The Farmer’s Review of July 28, 1881, calls attention to the pres- 
ence of a new pest, a small moth, that had appeared in the grain 
fields, whose larva burrowed into and ate out the centre of the 
kernels, and also states that this larva attacks corn, not only in the 
ear, but after it has been shelled and placed in store. 
Messrs. Halliday Bros., of Cairo, Illinois, say that it has caused 
more or less trouble in the elevators of that place for at least ten 
years. 
