1S46.] Insects Injurious to Vegetation. 263 



During a long interval we meet with no further notices of this 

 species. Its depredations would appear to have been so slight, 

 and public attention was so much engrossed with other affairs, 

 that nothing, as we have discovered, is recorded of it. 



At length, in 1817, it is stated to have renewetl its ravages in 

 various sections of the country. In the neighborhood of New 

 York and of Philadelphia, it is evident that it was unusually abun- 

 dant, and in parts of Maryland and Virginia, it was perhaps more 

 destructive than it had ever been before. 



It was on the 24th of June in this year, that Mr. Say read be- 

 fore the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences a paper en- 

 titled " Some account of the insect known by the name of Hessian 

 fly, and of a parasitic insect that feeds on it." This contains an 

 accurate technical description of the insect, on which he bestows 

 the name Cecidomyia destructor, and also of its most common 

 parasite, referred by him to the genus Ceraphron, and also named 

 destructor. This paper was published in the Journal of the Aca- 

 demy (vol. i., p. 45-48), issued in the course of the ensuing 

 month, and was followed in August by a copperplate illustration 

 of these insects, drawn and engraved by Mr. C. A. Le Sueur. 

 " A local habitation and a name" were thus conferred upon this 

 world-renowned species, by which it has ever since been definitely 

 specified and arranged in works of science. 



In the American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review for 

 August, 1817, (New York, vol i., p. 275-279,) appeared a paper 

 bearing the title, " An account of the wheat insect of America, 

 or the Tipula vaginalis tritici, commonly called the Hessian fly." 

 This paper gives the substance of Judge Havens's memoir, and 

 professes to copy a technical name and description which had 

 been published by Dr. Mitchell in the JVew York Gazette of July 

 3d. But whoever refers to the JVeic York Gazette, will find no 

 attempt at a technical description, nor no name except that of 

 Tipula tritici, which is in one instance, casually as it were, made 

 use of. The word vaginalis is therefore an interpolation of the 

 writer in the Magazine,- and as he, at least on some subsequent 

 occasions, refrained from bringing this name farther into noticej 



