YALE AGRICULTURAL LECTURES. 27 



grown, the finest crops of this grain are now produced. Another 

 gentleman stated, he was satisfied tljis was also the true solu 

 tion of a fact that appeared quite singular and unaccountable, 

 viz. : that here on some of the old lands of Connecticut, excel 

 lent crops of wheat have recently been grown. The cultivation 

 of this grain had been so long abandoned here, that all these 

 wheat insects have probably disappeared, and thus released 

 from them, these crops that have occasioned so much surprise, 

 have grown on the old lands here, without any special manur 

 ing or other management of the crop. 



Dr. FITCH lectured again this afternoon, his subject this time 

 being "Insects injurious to Grain Crops, with a Particular Ac 

 count of the Wheat Midge and Hessian Fly." 



He said that our losses are immeasurably greater from insects 

 than those of European nations ; as we have not only our own, 

 but many foreign ones introduced here, and these latter often 

 greatly surpass in their destructiveness, with us, anything 

 recorded of them in their native haunts. And yet, because of 

 not being so overcrowded in population, they were not felt so 

 much ; for there the loss of one-eighth of a crop would be 

 regarded as a great national disaster, whilst here it would 

 scarcely be noticed. 



The Hessian fly was undoubtedly introduced into this coun 

 try, as at first supposed, in some straw used for package, by 

 the Hessian troops which landed at Flatbush, L. I., August, 

 1776. The few insects thus brought here multiplied so that 

 in 1779 the wheat fields in that town were destroyed. And 

 from thence it gradually spread in every direction, advancing 

 about twenty miles a year, penetrating to every part of our 

 country. It is a small, white, footless worm, which changes to 

 a pupa resembling a flax-seed, found at the crown of the root 

 in autumn and winter, and at the next June another generation 

 nestles at the lower joints of the stalks. Within a year or two 

 of its first arrival in any given place, most of the surrounding 



