328 [Assembly 



this decidedly when it is used or weighed. Its powers of multipli- 

 cation are very great, a single grain, it is said, will have 6,000 

 descendants in a season. A species or variety of this weevil will 

 not only destroy the plum, nectarine, apricot, but also the peach, 

 pear and apple ; Dr. Harris and others have seen them in the act 

 of puncturing these, and the effect some time after on the fruit. 



The Chinch bug of the Hemiptera order, have committed great 

 ravages to the South, especially Virginia, this season on grain. 

 Dr. Harris thinks, from the manner in which Kirby and Spence, 

 the great English entomologists, speak of it, it is little known in 

 England or in Europe, and its habits very imperfectly understood 

 here; it has been confined in its ravages as yet, pretty much to 

 the South and West. The wheat caterpillar is very destructive 

 to grain, both before and after it gets ripe ; it infests every section 

 of our country, north and south, and belongs to the genus or 

 order Lepidoptera. There are a great many generas, orders, spe- 

 cies, and varieties into which this family is subdivided. It is one 

 of the most numerous and perhaps most so of any of the insect 

 races; some of the species are four or five years in reaching the 

 last stage, the winged state, and it is said by naturalists who have 

 made the calculation, that the third generation of the whole 

 living at one time will make 657 thousand millions; a few yearT 

 would place its numbers beyond the power of figures to estimate, 

 and the amount of mischief they do, equally inestimable. 



The Joint- worm or, as naturalists generally call it, Euritoma^ is 

 a destructive insect to wheat and has done much mischief this 

 year, especially to the South. Dr. Harris recommends burning 

 the stubble after reaping, and the straw, and winnowing^ as it is 

 near the second and third joint of the stem they deposit the egg. 

 This insect is in the order Hymenoptera. 



The Biptera order contains insects highly injurious to wheat, 



in the north and east they abound most, such as the Hessian Fly-^ 



c, scient.'fically called Cecidomyia Tritici, meaning Wheat Fly. 



The Europeans understand the character and habits of insects 

 oetter than we do ; they have been longer infested with, and suf- 

 fered much more by them than we have. Besides various minor 



