128 Observations on the Season of 1816. 



There plight, however, to be an exception made in re- 

 lation to a sort of voracious larva or grub, which has done 

 incalculable damage to pastures and meadows. It is a 

 whitish, blind, hexapodal thing, more numerous in the 

 soil than has been often observed, and co-operating with 

 the cold and the drought of the summer and autumn, 

 has destroyed in many farms the gra-s so entirely, that 

 not a green blade remains. I have not experimentally found 

 the imago into which this creature is metamorphosed. 

 But some of my friends, who declare they know, have as- 

 sured me that it is the great night beetle of the summer 

 months. There have been at New York fewer fleas and 

 musquitoes than ordinary.* 



There will not be half a crop of maize on Long Island, 

 and in the southern district of this state. Further north- 

 ward there will be less. The buckwheat is so scanty., 

 that a few days ago I paid four dollars for a half barrel of 

 the meal, for the use of my family. 



The winter crop of wheat and rye was abundant; yet 

 the alleged scarcity in Great Britain has so raised the 

 price of wheat and flour, that the former is selling at two 

 dollars and a half the bushel, and the latter has actually, 

 within a few days, been sold for thirteen dollars the barrel. 



* This is the grub of the Cock-chaffer, which often injures pastures 

 and other grass grounds ; and has not been known m iterially to prey 

 on young Indian corn plants, which grow beyond its reach, before the 

 season when its ravages are dangerous. It delights most in seddy 

 grounds; and preferring to live in greater depths under the surface, 

 than other progeny of insects ; it is frequently protccte I, and ena- 

 bled occasionally to visit the face of the ground in vigour, whilst those 

 which inhabit the surface, or remain in shallow retirements, are de- 

 stroyed in anomalous seasons. **■• I • 



