204 Season of 1816. 



London Grove, 6th Mo. 14, 1817. 



Dear Friend, 



Observing thy invitation to farmers, in the Freeman's 

 Journal, I sit down to communicate some remarks which 

 have forcibly pressed themselves on my attention. Be- 

 ing neither philosopher, chemist, nor botanist, and more 

 disposed to profit by my neighbours' experiments than 

 to hazard any myself, I shall confine myself to such facts 

 as have met my eye in the humble avocation of a plough- 

 man. 



The severity of the weather in 1816, which prolonged 

 the cold till after midsummer, made dreadful havoc 

 among the eggs and nestlings of all wild birds, and de- 

 stroyed thousands of the old. These birds, we know, 

 chiefly subsist and feed their young upon flies and creep- 

 ing insects, of every description : I might say entirely, 

 since in the breeding season there are no ripe seeds to 

 assist them in that office. It follows, that flies of all 

 kinds, and their larvae, which include, I believe, worms 

 and caterpillars of every description, except the varieties 

 of the so called earth worm, must have abounded and 

 multiplied in an uncommon degree. The cut worm fly, 

 (which we believe to be shaped like the musquitoe, but 

 three or four times its size, of a dull yellow colour, with 

 long legs extending remarkably behind as it flies,) and 

 the Hessian fly being comparatively undisturbed, had full 

 leisure to deposit their eggs ; and few can have failed of 

 remarking, that the migratory tribes of small birds are, 

 this year, perhaps, not by one twentieth so numerous as 

 usual. Blackbirds especially, which used to visit our 

 fields in clouds, at the very season when the cut worm 



