150 



THE AMEEICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



attacks, and all that we have seen or liearcl of, 

 except cue, were badly hurt by it." It first 

 began to be observed in that region in 1848, and 

 in subsequent years it increased gradually in 

 numbers. According to Prof. Cabell, of the 

 University of Virginia, the loss occasioned by 

 this insect often amounts to one-third of the 

 average crop, and is sometimes much greater ; 

 and in 1851 " some farmers did not reap as 

 much as they sowed* In 1860 the rye crop was 

 considerablj'' injured by this little pest in Lyco- 

 ming Co., Pennsylvania; and according to our 

 entomological friend, Mr. Norton, the species 

 is very common upon rye ' ' in Connecticut and 

 probably the other New England States. f As 

 long ago as 1829, it had been noticed in various 

 parts of the New England States to attack the 

 barley, causing it in some places ■' to yield only 

 a very small crop, and on some farms not much 

 more than the seed sown ;"t although since that 

 date it does not appear to have been materially 

 troublesome in that region. But in Central 

 New York, formerly the great barley-growing 

 district of America, it has been ruinously de- 

 structive to the barley since about 1850. In the 

 words of Mr. George Geddes, the late Presi- 

 dent of the N. Y. State Agricultural Society — 

 "Formerly we expected forty bushels of barley 

 to the acre ; now we cannot rely on more than 

 twenty. "II And he goes on to state that this 

 falling off is principally due to the depredations 

 of the Joint-worm ; and that, unless some relief 

 from it is found, the farmers of Central New 

 York will have to discontinue raising this crop. 

 Lastly, in Canada "West, in the neighborhood 

 of Grimsby, it was very abundant upon barley 

 in the years 1866 and '67, as we learn from our 

 esteemed correspondent, Mr. J. Pettit, of that 

 town. 



It is a curious fact that — so far as can be at 

 present ascertained — this destructive insect does 

 not seem to have reached the "Valley of the Missis- 

 sippi. At all events, no complaints from the '\¥est 

 of any such attacks as those described above, 

 either upon wheat, rye or barley, have hitherto 

 been made public. It is very possible, however, 

 that the Joint-worm may have been confounded 

 ill the West with the Hessian Fly {Cecido- 

 myia destructor, Say) , the larva of which in- 

 fests precisely the same part of the wheat plant, 

 namely the space immediately above one of the 

 lowermost knots in the straw. But this last 



*Qiiotedljy Harris, Injurious Insects, p, 557. 



tSee his note in Harris , ibid, p. .501. Also Fitoli's iV, I". 

 Rep. Ill, p 163. 



tHarris, ibid., p. 551. 



\\Trans. N. Y. St. Agric. Societij , 1859, p. 332, quoted by 

 Fitch. 



( 



may be distinguished from the Joint-worm 

 by living in the open space between the stem 

 and the sheath of the blade, although it occa- 

 sionally imbeds itself pretty deeply in the 

 external surface of the stem; whereas, the true 

 Joint-worm always inhabits a smooth egg- 

 shaped cell in the Internal substance of that 

 stem. 



It may also seem a strange thing that — so far 

 as is known — the Joint-worm should in Virginia 

 attack wheat exclusively, and in New England 

 and New York barley exclusively. This, how- 

 ever, may be partly due to the fact that but 

 very little barley is grown in Virginia, and but 

 very little wheat in New England; and partly, 

 "■perhaps, to the very limited extent to which the 

 depredations of our various noxious insects 

 have hitherto been observed and recorded. Up 

 to quite a recent period, even otherwise intelli- 

 gent men have been in the habit of considering 

 all "bugs" and "bug-hunters" as beneath 

 their notice. And the consequence is that, 

 when we search the back numbers of our 

 Agricultural Journals for informatiwi on the 

 past history of any particular " bug," we 

 often find nothing but a mass of error and con- 

 fusion, and are almost alwa3^s utterly incapable 

 of ascertaining of which particular " bug," out 

 of the thirty thousand "bugs" found within 

 the limits of the United States, the few ento- 

 mological articles that we meet with, are 

 intended to treat. 



Natural History of the Joint-worm. 



The mode in which the Joint-worm produces 

 its destructive effects upon small grain, may be 

 readily explained. Not only is the sap of the 

 plant abstracted on its road to the ear, in order 

 to form the abnormal woody enlargement or gall, 

 in which the larvse are imbedded, each in his 

 own private and peculiar cell, but a very large 

 supply of sap must be wasted in feeding the 

 larv» themselves. Hence the ear that woiild 

 otherwise be fully developed becomes more or 

 less blasted and shriveled; although we are 

 told tliat, in the case of barley more particu- 

 larly, the plant tillers out laterally, so as 

 partially to supply the loss of the main crop of 

 ears. A similar phenomenon occurs with 

 almost all galls that grow upon a slender stem 

 or tM'ig, that is, the stem or twig is more or 

 less killed or blasted thereby ; but when a twig 

 is quite large, this result often fails to be de- 

 veloped. 



The Joint-worm Fly (Fig. 113, 6, ?) makes 

 its appearance in the North in the fore part and 



T. GLOVED 



