234 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



Future researches, however, may delect dissimilarities in their 

 habits, and show that portions of the following account are true only 

 with regard to one of these. 



Its FOREIGN HISTORY. 



The first distinct and unequivocal account of the wheat-fly, of 

 which I am aware, is that given by Mr. Christopher Gullet, in 1771, 

 and published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal So- 

 ciety the following year.* From this it would appear that the effects 



* So long ago as the year 1768, Col. Langdon Carter, of Virginia, transmitted to 

 the American Philosophical Society a paper entitled " Observations concerning the 

 FLY-WEEVIL that destroys the wheat; " which was published in the first volume of the 

 Society's Transactions, 2d edition, pages 274 - 287. The account here given, is in 

 nearly all its particulars so strikingly applicable to the wheat-fly, that so much of it as 

 relates to the insect itself merits an introduction in this place. He rather quaintly re- 

 marks, " In a pleasant evening, after the sun was down, and every thing serenely 

 calm, I found the rascals extremely busy amongst my ears, and really very numerous. 

 I immediately inclosed some of them in a light loose handkerchief; and by the mag- 

 nifiers of my telescope, I took occasion minutely to examine them. They are a pale 

 brownish moth, with little trunks or bodies, some trifle shorter than their wings ; and 

 as some of their little bodies appeared bulging as if loaded, I applied the pressure of a 



i 



n 



fine straw upon them, and saw them squirt out, one after another, a number of little 

 things which I took to be eggs, some more, some less : some emitted fifteen or twenty 

 of them ; and others appeared extremely lank in their little trunks, which I could not 

 make discharge anything like an egg. Whether they had done this in the field before, 

 or were of the male kind, I could not tell ; but from this discovery I concluded that 

 there need not be above two or three flies to an ear of corn, to lay eggs enough to de- 

 stroy the greatest crop. * * * It is with much propriety called a weevil, as it destroys 

 the wheat even in our granaries; though it is not of the kind termed by naturalists 

 the curaiUo, of which they have given a very long list ; for it is not like a bug ; it 

 carries no cases for its wings ; neither has it any feelers, with which the curculio is " 

 always distinguished ; and perhaps (as I fancy it will turn out in the course of this 

 letter that they never attack grain when hard) they really have no occasion for such 

 feelers. For from the make of it, to my judgment it appears an impossibility that it 

 should ever perforate into a hard grain, being furnished with nothing in nature, from ., 

 the most minute examination by glasses, that could make such a perforation ; and | 

 seems indeed a fly itself, consisting of nothing sensible to the slightest touch wiih the ' 

 finger, nor to the eye assisted with glasses, leaving only a little dry pale brown glossy 

 dust on being squeezed." 



I doubt not but that on perusing this extract, almost every reader who is conversant 

 with our wheat-fly will feel confident that it is the same insect to which Col. Carter 

 alludes. Yet if his account be more particularly observed, we gather from it some 

 characters which assure us that it was not the wheat-fly which he examined. Although 

 he uses the terms 7notk and fly as synonymous, and nowhere tells us whether his 

 specimens had four or only two winge, ye^ he could scarcely have spoken of the lively 

 orange color of our wheat-fly as " pale brownish ; " and what is yet more conclusiva^ 



( 



