592 ' DIPTEEA. 



appeared in " Tlie Genesee Farmer," and in " The Cul- 

 tivator," some of them written by the late Judge Buel, by 

 whom, as well as by the editors of " The Yankee Farm- 

 er," rewards were offered for the discovery of the means 

 to prevent its ravages. Premiums have also been pro- 

 posed, for the same end, by the Kennebec County Agri- 

 cultural Society, in Maine, which were followed by the 

 publication, in " The Maine Farmer," of three " Essays on 

 the Grain- Worm," presented to that Society. These essays 

 were reprinted in the seventeenth volume of the " New 

 England Farmer," wherein, as well as in some other vol- 

 umes of the same work, several other articles on this insect 

 may be found. From these sources, and, more especially, 

 from some interesting letters wherewith I was favored in 

 tlic years 1838 and 1841, by Mrs. N. G. Gage, formerly 

 of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, the history of the wheat- 

 fly in America, published in the first edition of this work, 

 was chiefly derived. It will be found to contain a circum- 

 stantial relation of the moulting of the maggot, a process 

 ■which hitherto does not appear to have been understood in 

 Europe, and which later writers on the history of the wheat- 

 fly in this country have failed to describe. Personal obser- 

 vations on this insect in Maine and New Hampshire, and 

 in the western parts of Massachusetts and of Connecticut, 

 together with information gathered there from intelligent 

 farmers, confirm the general correctness of my former 

 statements, and enable me to add thereto some further 

 particulars. 



The American wheat-insect, which I have seen alive, in 

 its winged form, in Maine and in New Hampshire, and 

 which I have also reared from the larva, agrees exactly 

 with the descriptions and figures of the European wheat- 

 fly, or Oecidomyia Tritici of Mr. Ivirby. It is a very small 

 orange-colored gnat, with long, slender, pale-yellow legs, 

 and two transparent wings, reflecting the tints of the rain- 

 bow, and fi'inged with delicate hairs. Its eyes are black 



