THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



109 



men, and shaped like a Musketo but much smaller; 

 when the male and female couple as usual, and the 

 female lays her eggs for the second brood. By this 

 time, in the latitude of New York, it is usually the 

 beginning of September or thereabouts, the period 

 varying a little according to the season and the la- 

 titude ; and there is now no wheat standing uncut 

 in the fields, for the mother-fly to lay her eggs upon 

 the ear, if she was so minded. But she is not so 

 minded. Nature tells her to deposit her eggs, as 

 before, on the leaves of the new crop of growing 

 wheat or growing rye; but this time she lays them 

 almost or quite underground, as if she had been 

 aware that winter was coming and her future fami- 

 ly would require protection from the weather. The 

 larvge produced from these eggs crawl downwards 

 as before, pass through the same circle of changes 

 as before, and come out in the spring, in the same 

 Musketo-like form in which the other brood had 

 come out in the preceding autumn, to generate the 

 1st brood of the current year, as already ex- 

 plained. 



2nd. The only proof oflfered by Mr. Newcomer of 

 his new theory is, that a " uitt" or egg is to be met 

 with "in the curve of the grain," by which I sup- 

 pose he means the groove found on one side of the 

 kernel. No such "nitt" is to be met with. But 

 suppose there is. How does that prove that the 

 "nitt" is the egg of a Hessian Fly? The grain is 

 harvested in June or July. The 1st brood of the 

 Hessian Fly comes out about May 1st and is too ear- 

 ly for the ripe grain. The 2nd brood comes out, at 

 the very earliest, the last week or so in August, and 

 is too late for the ripe grain. Consequently, even if 

 eggs existed on the ripe grain, they could not be 

 the eggs of the Hessian Fly A certain D. H. Sher- 

 man in Illinois recently fancied, that he had found 

 eggs in the "fuzzy" or blossom end of the kernels 

 of wheat; and forthwith jumped to the conclusion 

 that these must be the eggs of the Chinch-bug, and 

 that by pickling the seed-wheat the Chinch-bug 

 could be annihilated. It has been well shown in 

 the columns of the Practical Entomologist by 

 Mr. C. V. Riley, (No. 6, pp. 47 — 8,) that no such 

 eggs existed, and that the Chinch-bug laid its eggs 

 elsewhere; but Mr. Sherman had at least the ad- 

 vantage over his Maryland compeer of not assert- 

 ing impossibilities. He never pretended, as Mr. 

 Newcomer does, that an insect, which exists, in the 

 winged state, only in the spring and the autumn, 

 laid its eggs upon the ripe wheat kernels in the 

 middle of the summer. 



3rd. Mr. Newcomer says that " if the season 

 should be dry, the insect cuts through the stock 

 [stalk ?], which [insect ?] generally makes its ap- 

 pearance about the 10th or 15th of June." It is 

 physically impossible that the Hessian Fly should 

 cut through anything, because it has got no jaws 

 to cut with. In fact it always works its way out to 

 the light of day between the straw and the leaf, 

 while it is still in the pupa state, without cutting 

 any hole at all ; and then bursts its pupal envelop 

 and comes out as a winged fly. But there is a 

 small black parasitic Chalcis fly, (the destructor of 



Say) which I bred myself in South Illinois from 

 straw infested by Hessian flies, and which really 

 does cut a round hole to make its way out by, and 

 comes out in June and July, instead of early in 

 May, like the Hessian Fly. Evidently Mr. New- 

 comer has mistaken this parasite for the Hessian 

 Fly — and confounded his best friend with his bit- 

 terest enemy. But what does that matter, if he can 

 coax every county in the United States into paying 

 him 1100 for his blunders? 



Perhaps, in what has been said above, I have 

 spoken with undue harshness of Mr. Newcomer and 

 his pretended discovery. Perhaps he is a very 

 worthy man and a very excellent entomologist, and 

 is by no means desirous of lining his own private 

 and peculiar pockets with a goodly amount of green- 

 backs from the humbugged and victimized far- 

 mers of the United States. Perhaps, instead of 

 the Chalcis fly being parasitic on the Hessian Fly, 

 as we poor ignorant old-fashioned Entomologists 

 had hitherto all of us believed, it is in reality the 

 Hessian Fly that is parasitic upon the Chalcis fly. 

 Perhaps this Chalcis fly, coming out in June and 

 July, does really lay its eggs, as Mr. Newcomer as- 

 serts, in the lateral groove of the ripe kernel of 

 wheat while the crop stands in the field. Perhaps 

 the Chinch-bug, as Mr. Sherman asserts, does real- 

 ly lay its eggs upon the fu~zij end of the same ripe 

 kernel of wheat. Perhaps — to make the whole 

 thing complete — the Wheat Midge lays its eggs 

 upon the smooth end of the same fully ripe kernel 

 of wheat. Perhaps, therefore, with one fell swoop, 

 we can annihilate those three worst enemies of the 

 wheat-grower — the Hessian Fly, the Chinch-bug, 

 and the Wheat Midge — by the application to our 

 seed-wheat of the same Universal and Infallible 

 Pickle, patented by Messrs. Newcomer, Sherman 

 & Co. Perhaps brood-mares do really lay eggs and 

 sit upon thom till they hatch out. Quien sahe ? 

 Who knows ? Perhaps Messrs. Newcomer and Sher- 

 man know more about the habits of the Hessian 

 Fly and the Chinch-bug, than Dr. Harris and Dr. 

 Fitch and Mr. Herrick and Dr. Le Baron and 

 Thomas Say and Baron Kollar and Dr. Chapman 

 and Mr. Havens and Mr. Tilghman and that miser- 

 able Illinois scalawag, Benj. D. Walsh. Perhaps 

 we ought implicitly to believe all that these two 

 learned persons tell us, and distrust the evidence 

 of all the others, who, as they know a great deal 

 about other insects, may be reasonably inferred to 

 know nothing at all about the Hessian Fly and the 

 Chinch-bug; on the principle that, when a bottle 

 is choak-full, you cannot anyhow pour any more 

 whiskey into it. Perhaps, when one has a lawsuit 

 on hand, instead of applying to one of those rascal- 

 ly "high-faluting" lawyers, who are always using 

 crack-jaw words that nobody else can understand, 

 it is wise and prudent to entrust one's case to the 

 first good honest shoemaker that comes along. Per- 

 haps, when you are taken down with the Typhus fe- 

 ver, instead of applying to a regularly-educated phy- 

 sician, the safest course is to call in the worthy tailor 

 from next door, to bleed, blister and purge you ac- 

 cording to his peculiar sartorial notions of physi- 



