246 Insects Injurious to Vegetation. [Oct., 



and we now proceed to detail the evidence which induces us to 

 believe that the Hessian fly is indeed a European insect. 



It would appear that this insect, or one identical with it in its 

 appearance and habits, did exist, and commit severe ravages in 

 Europe, long anterior to its appearance in America. In Du- 

 harael's Practical Treatise of Husbandry, (London, 1759, 4to, p. 

 90,) and also in his Elements of Agriculture, (Lond. 17G4, 8vo., 

 vol. i., p. 269,) after alluding to a worm in the root of oats, he 

 says, " I suspect it to have been an insect of this kind that de- 

 stroyed so much wheat in the neighborhood of Geneva, and which 

 M. de Chateauvieux describes thus: 'Our wheat in the present 

 month of May 1755, sustained a loss, ^yhich even that cultivated 

 according to the new husbandry has not escaped. A number of 

 small white worms have been found on it, which, after a time, 

 t^lrn to a chesnid color; they place themselves betivixt the leaves 

 and gnaw the stalk; they are commonly found betwixt the first 

 joint and the root; the stalks on which they fix are immediately 

 at a stand; they g^roi^ yellow and wither. The same accident 

 happened in 1732: these insects appeared about the middle of 

 May, and did so much damage that the crops were scarcely worth 

 anything.' " This account, though perhaps too brief and imper- 

 fect to justify a decided opinion, corresponds much more exactly 

 with the Hessian fly, than with any other insect of which we 

 have any knowledge. Acquainted with it as our men of science 

 in this country were, we are surprised they so readily and unani- 

 mously succumbed to the sentiment that the species was indige- 

 nous to America. 



In 1788, as we are informed in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 

 (art. Hessian fly, § 5,) the Duke of Dorset addressed a letter to 

 the Royal Society of Agriculture in France, enquiring if the Hes- 

 sian fly existed in that country. " The report of the society was 

 accompanied with a drawing of two insects, one of which was 

 supposed to be the caterpillar of the Hessian fly, from its attack- 

 ing the wheat only when in the herb; beginning its ravages in 

 autumn, reappearing in the spring, and undergoing the same me- 

 tamorphoses." From an obscurity in the phraseology of the sub- 



