EGGS OF THE HESSIAN FLY. 573 



specks. My own mind being thus completely and folly 

 satisfied as to the mode in which the egg was deposited, 

 I proceeded directly to my dwelling, and put the plant 

 with the eggs upon it in a large glass tumbler, adding a 

 little water to the earth, and secured the vessel by cover- 

 ing it with paper, so that no insect could get access to 

 the interior. The paper was sufficiently perforated with 

 pin-holes for the admission of air. The tumbler with its 

 contents was daily watched by myself to discover the hatch- 

 ing of. the eggs. About the middle of the fifteenth day 

 from the deposit of the eggs, I was so fortunate as to dis- 

 cover a very small maggot or worm, of a reddish cast, 

 making its way with considerable activity down the blade, 

 and saw it till it disappeared between the blade and stem 

 of the plant. This, I have no doubt, was the produce of 

 one of the eggs, and would, I presume, have hatched 

 much sooner, had the plant remained in the field. It was 

 my intention to have carried on the experiment, by endeav- 

 oring to hatch out the insect from the flax-seed state into 

 the perfect fly again ; but being called from home, the plant 

 was suffered to' perish. The fly that I caught on the blade 

 of the wheat, as above stated, I enclosed in a letter to Mr. 

 John S. Skinner, the editor of 'The American Farmer,' of 

 Baltimore, who pronounced it to be a genuine Hessian fly, 

 and identical in appearance with others recently received 

 from Virginia." 



Dr. Chapman agrees with this writer in saying, that the 

 Hessian fly lays her eggs in the small creases of the young 

 leaves of the wheat. Mr. Havens states, that the fly lays 

 her eggs on the leaves. In the fortieth number of "The 

 Connecticut Farmer's Gazette," Mr. Herrick says : " I have 

 repeatedly, both in autumn and in spring, seen the Hessian 

 fly in the act of depositing eggs on wheat, and have always 

 found that she selects for this purpose the leaves of the 

 young plant. The eggs are laid in various numbers on 

 the upper surface of the strap-shaped portion (or blade) 



