26 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



more extraordinary. In 1788 an alarm was excited in this country by the 

 probability of importing, in cargoes of wheat from North America, the in- 

 sect known by the name of the Hessian fly, whose dreadful ravages will be 

 adverted to hereafter. However the insect tribes are in general despised, 

 they had on that occasion ample revenge. The privy council sat day after 

 day anxiously debating what measures should be adopted to ward off the 

 danger of a calamity more to be dreaded, as they well knew, than the plague 

 or pestilence. Expresses were sent off in all directions to the officers of 

 the customs at the different outports respecting the examination of cargoes 

 despatches written to the ambassadors in France, Austria, Prussia, and 

 America, to gain that information of the want of which they were now so 

 sensible ; and so important was the business deemed, that the minutes of 

 council and the documents collected from all quarters fill upwards of two 

 hundred octavo pages. 1 Fortunately England contained one illustrious 

 naturalist, the most authentic source of information on all subjects which 

 connect Natural History with Agriculture and the Arts, to whom the privy 

 council had the wisdom to apply ; and it was by Sir Joseph Banks's ento- 

 mological knowledge, and through his suggestions, that they were at length 

 enabled to form some kind of judgment on the subject. This judgment 

 was, after all, however, very imperfect. As Sir Joseph Banks had never 

 seen the Hessian fly, nor was it described in any entomological system, he 

 called for facts respecting its nature, propagation, and economy, which 

 could be had only from America. These were obtained as speedily as 

 possible, and consist of numerous letters from individuals, essays from 

 magazines, the reports of the British minister there, c. &c. One would 

 have supposed that from these statements, many of them drawn up by 

 farmers who had lost entire crops by the insect, which they profess to have 

 examined in every stage, the requisite information might have been acquired. 

 So far, however, was this from being the case, that many of the writers 

 seemed ignorant whether the insect be a moth, a fly, or what they term a 

 bug. And though from the concurrent testimony of several, its being a 

 two-winged fly seemed pretty accurately ascertained, no intelligible de- 

 scription was given from which any naturalist could infer to what genus 

 it belonged, or whether it was a known species. With regard to the history 

 of its propagation and economy the statements were so various and con- 

 tradictory, that though he had such a mass of materials before him, Sir 

 Joseph Banks was unable to reach any satisfactory conclusion. 2 



Nothing can more incontrovertibly demonstrate the importance of 

 studying Entomology as a science than this fact. Those observations, to 

 which thousands of unscientific sufferers proved themselves incompetent, 

 would have been readily made by one entomologist well versed in his 

 science. He would at once have determined the order and genus of the 

 insect, and whether it was a known or new species ; and in a twelvemonth 

 at furthest he would have ascertained in what manner it made its attacks, 

 and whether it were possible that it might be transmitted along with grain 

 into a foreign country; and on these solid data he could have satisfactorily 

 pointed out the best mode of eradicating the pest, or preventing the exten- 

 sion of its ravages. 



1 Young's Annals of Agriculture, xi. 406. 



2 The American Entomologist Say was the first who satisfactorily determined 

 the species and genus of the insect in question. Say on Cecidomyia Destructor, in 

 Town. Acad. Nat. Sc. Philadelph., i. ; and Kirby in Loudon's Mag. Nat. Hist., i. 



