286 Flashlights on Nature 



subject of study by my collaborator, Mr. Knock, 

 and whose stranj^e story I shall detail (largely 

 from his materials) with no unnecessary scientific 

 verbiage in this present chapter. 



The new invader is called the Hessian fly ; and 

 he made his first appearance in Britain, or at least 

 first attracted official entomological attention in 

 this country, in 1886. If he was here earlier, 

 he skulked incognito. For more than a century, 

 however, he liad already been a great scourge in 

 America, where he first acquired the name of 

 Hessian fly during the revolutionary war, through 

 the popular belief that he had been imported from 

 Europe into Pennsylvania by the Hessian troops 

 employed as mercenaries by George III. in his 

 fruitless struggle against the revolted colonies. 

 The Hessians were the hefes noircs of the patriotic 

 Americans ; and the farmers, finding their crops 

 devastated by a pest till then unknown, came 

 at once to the conclusion that their enemy. King 

 George, had sent the two plagues, human and 

 entomological, over sea together. They regarded 

 the question much in the same spirit as that of 

 the loyal poet in the " Rejected Addresses," when 

 he asks about Napoleon, " Who fills the butchers' 

 shops with large blue flies ? " The Briton set 

 down every natural misfortune to " the Corsican 

 ogre" ; the American set down all evils that befell 

 him to the Rhenish mercenaries. 



Ever since that day, much controversy has raged 

 in America and Germany as to the original home 

 of the destructive creature. One school of dis- 



