502 



LEPIDOPTERA. 



we are not to understand that these are the only ones ; for 

 French writers inform us, that others are produced during 

 the whole summer, and that the production of the insects 

 is accelerated or retarded by differences in the temperature 

 of the air.* When damaged grain is sown, it comes up 

 very thin ; the infected kernels seldom sprout, but the in- 

 sects lodged in them remain alive, finish their transforma- 

 tions in the field, and in due time come out of the ground 

 in the winged form. 



To the foregoing sketch must now be added an account 

 of an American grain-insect, which, in the first edition of 

 this treatise, I suggested would prove to be the same as 

 the Angoumois grain-moth. Having since obtained some 

 of these American insects from various quarters, and having 

 had a colony of them living and increasing, for three years, 

 under my own eye, I find them to agree, in all essential 

 particulars, with the European species. Until, therefore, 

 they are proved, by actual comparison with perfect speci- 

 mens of the latter, to be absolutely distinct, I must consider 

 it as next to certain that they are identical, and that they 

 have been introduced into this country from Europe. Per- 

 haps, hereafter, the mode of their introduction may be as 

 satisfactorily ascertained as that of the Hessian fly. In the 

 year 1768, Colonel Landon Carter, of Sabine Hall, Virginia, 

 communicated to the American Philosophical Society at Phila- 

 delphia some interesting " Observations concerning the Fly- 

 Weevil that destroys Wheat." These were printed in the 

 first volume of the " Transactions " of the Society, and were 

 followed by some remarks on the subject by " the Committee 

 of Husbandry." This is the earliest authentic account of 

 the insect that I have met with. The Committee stated, 

 that " it was said the injury of wheat from these flies began 

 in North Carolina about forty years before, and that they 

 had extended gradually from Carolina into Virginia, Mary- 

 land, and the lower counties of Delaware, but had not then 

 * Olivier, Encyclopedic M^thodique, Insectes, Tom. IV. p. 115. 



