A FOREIGN INVASION OF ENGLAND 287 



putants hotly maintains that the Hessian fly, which 

 now abounds in parts of France, Austria, and 

 Russia, is a native of the Old World, and that its 

 first home coincided with that of our primitive 

 cereals, Southern Europe and Western Asia. An- 

 other school, anxious to make out the enemy an 

 American citizen, fights hard for its being an 

 aboriginal inhabitant of the United States. Thus 

 much, at least, is certain, that at the present day 

 the "fly" is found in both hemispheres in too 

 great abundance, and that in America in particular 

 in certain disastrous years it has almost ruined 

 the entire wheat crop. I have seen whole fields 

 upon fields there simply pillaged by its ravages. 

 The loss produced by this insignificant little crea- 

 ture, indeed, has in some seasons been measured 

 by millions of pounds sterling. 



If you go out into a barley-field in England 

 where the Hessian fly has effected his entrance, 

 you will probably find a large number of plants of 

 barley, like that delineated in No. i, with the 

 stem bent down sharply toward the ground at the 

 second joint. At first sight you might imagine 

 these stalks were merely broken by the wind or 

 fallen by their own weight ; but if you exa- 

 mine them closely in the neighbourhood of the 

 bend, which occurs with singular unanimity in 

 all the affected plants at about the same point, 

 you will find inside the sheath of the blade, where 

 it encircles the stem, a curious little body which 

 the farmers with rough eloquence have agreed 

 to describe as a " flax-seed." If you watch the 



