1846.] Insects Injurious to Vegetation. 2 5 1 



tance. As the flax seeds moreover, evolve the perfect insect in 

 August, it must be equally rare that a solitary fly comes from the 

 straw after that date. These facts clearly show that there is but 

 one mode, and but one month in the year, in which this insect 

 could probably have been conveyed to this country at that time, 

 to wit, in straw landed upon our coast in August. If landed at 

 a later date, the flies would have completed their transformations, 

 and made their escape, or perished in their confinement; if ear- 

 lier, there is no probability that the straw could have been of the 

 growth of that year, consequently it would have contained no live 

 insects. Our present knowledge of the habits of this insect thus 

 affords us a singularly accurate test, for ascertaining the truth of 

 the original theory respecting the mode in which it was intro- 

 duced. 



And how do the facts furnished us by the military history of 

 those times, accord with what we have seen to be almost essential 

 contingencies to the importation of this insect? Early in July 

 of the year 1776, General Sir William How^e arrived on the 

 New York coast from Halifax, with the troops which had evacu- 

 ated Boston, and debarked upon that part of Staten Island which 

 lies within the Narrows — one of the reasons which induced him 

 to make this part of the continent the central point of his opera- 

 tions being, that " Long Island was very fertile in wheat and all 

 other corns, and was deemed almost equal alone to the mainte- 

 nance of an army." (Bisset^s Hist. Geo. III.) We are informed 

 in Marshals Life of Washington, (vol. ii., p. 424,) under the date 

 of August, 1776, that " the reinforcements to the British army 

 were now arriving daily from Europe." Lord Howe's strength 

 was hereby augmented to twenty-four thousand men, about half 

 of whom (as is probable from the statement, page 416,) were 

 ne-vvly arrived " Hessians and Waldeckers." The most of these 

 were from Hesse Cassel, a district but about a hundred miles dis- 

 tant from Saxe-Coburg and Saxe-Altenburg, where, as we have 

 already seen, the same insect did much damage to the wheat crops 

 in 1833. And again, under the date of August 25, (p. 437,) it 

 is stated, that " on this day. General De Heister landed with two 



