118 LOSSES BY THE MIDGE. 



general, besides affording information to the 

 farmer respecting the habits of one of the most 

 fatal enemies to his produce when the season 

 is suitable to them. In the author's opinion, 

 the loss in 1845, over some farms, in the 

 county of Norfolk, was considerable ; and Mr. 

 Kirby, several years ago, calculated the de- 

 struction in one particular field of wheat 

 which he examined, as at least twenty bushels 

 in fifteen acres. In Perthshire, the loss in- 

 flicted by the midge in 1828 was estimated, 

 by a careful calculator, at one-third of the 

 crop. In 1830, an intelligent agriculturist in 

 the north observed, "Another year or two 

 of the wheat-fly will make two-thirds of the 

 farmers here bankrupts." Happily these 

 are not common cases ; but they are such as 

 the agricultural districts are perpetually in 

 danger of, and therefore the farmers ought 

 to be made well aware of the possibility of 

 the encroachments they are liable to when the 

 flies multiply to any great extent. It does not 

 follow, that because in certain years the damage 

 they have done is insignificant, it will be so at 

 other times, when the flies may, perhaps, come 

 in overwhelming numbers, unless a knowledge 

 of their habits enables us always to oppose a 



