440 ANIMALS INTRODUCED UNAWARES 



over the whole country, from Kent to Cromarty, causing 

 incalculable loss of wheat and barley by its devastations. 

 Since then there has been no serious or general attack in 

 this country, but the Hessian Fly is still with us, and may 

 be ''biding its time." Commerce has carried the Hessian 

 Fly to many lands. In the United States of America, 

 where its name originated on the supposition, probably 

 erroneous, that it was brought in straw from Europe by the 

 Hessian troopers of the Revolutionary War, it has been the 

 cause of greater destruction than even in Europe. Millions 

 of bushels of the wheat crop of 1915 were ruined by it, and 

 the annual damage to crops in the United States caused by 

 this tiny insignificant insect has been estimated at about 

 ,2,000,000. 



Probably much the same mode of transportation as gave 

 the Hessian Fly to the world accounts for the wide distri- 

 bution of its near relative, the Wheat Midge (Contarinia 

 (Cecidomyia) tritici), the " Red Maggot " of which does a 

 considerable amount of harm in this country as well as in 

 Europe generally and in North America. With it, as a 

 creature of uncertain provenance, may be placed the Corn 

 Aphis (Macrosiphium granariuni] which has caused an ap- 

 preciable amount of damage in southern Scotland, is common 

 throughout Europe, was unrecorded from only ten of the 

 United States of America in 1916, and has been found in 

 East Africa clearly a camp-follower of commerce. 



A minute yellow ant (Solenopsis molesta], and the so- 

 called White Ant of the United States, a Termite (Leuco- 

 termes flavipes], have been transported with food materials 

 from America to Europe, where both have done much 

 damage. The former, occurring amongst stores, is said to 

 have proved very troublesome to English housekeepers. In 

 Scotland, another American species, the Small Red House 

 Ant {Monomorium pharaonis], a common inhabitant of 

 London eating-houses, has been found in great numbers in 

 Edinburgh, as well as in Roxburghshire and Aberdeenshire. 

 In one place in Edinburgh where fruits, cake and confec- 

 tionery were stored, Dr R. S. MacDougall has recorded that 

 it was found necessary to employ a man whose chief work 

 was the destruction of these ants. 



Many beetles find their way to Scotland in cargoes of 



