26 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
more extraordinary. In 1788 an alarm was excited in this country by the 
probability of imperting, in cargoes of wheat from North America, the in- 
sect known by the name of the Hessian fly, whose dreadful ravages will be 
adverted to hereafter. However the insect tribes are in general despised, 
they had on that occasion ample revenge. The privy council sat day after 
day anxiously debating what measures should be adopted to ward off the 
danger of a calamity more to be dreaded, as they well knew, than the plague 
or pestilence. Expresses were sent off in all directions to the officers of 
the customs at the different outports respecting the examination of cargoes 
— despatches written to the ambassadors in France, Austria, Prussia, and 
America, to gain that information of the want of which they were now so 
sensible ; and so important was the business deemed, that the minutes of 
council and the documents collected from all quarters fill upwards of two 
hundred octavo pagest Fortunately England contained one illustrious 
naturalist, the most authentic source of information on all subjects which 
connect Natural History with Agriculture and the Arts, to whom the privy 
council had the wisdom to apply ; and it was by Sir Joseph Banks’s ento- 
mological knowledge, and through his suggestions, that they were at length 
enabled to form some kind of judgment on the subject. . This judgment 
was, after all, however, very imperfect. As Sir Joseph Banks had never 
seen the Hessian fly, nor was it described in any entomological system, he 
called for facts respecting its nature, propagation, and economy, which 
could be had only from America. These were obtained as speedily as 
possible, and consist of numerous letters from individuals, essays from 
magazines, the reports of the British minister there, &c. &c. One would 
have supposed that from these statements, many of them drawn up by 
farmers who had lost entire crops by the insect, which they profess to have 
examined in every stage, the requisite information might have been acquired. 
So far, however, was this from being the case, that many of the writers 
seemed ignorant whether the insect be a moth, a fly, or what they term a 
bug. And though from the concurrent testimony of several, its being a 
two-winged fly seemed pretty accurately ascertained, no intelligible de- 
scription was given from which any naturalist could infer to what genus 
it belonged, or whether it was a known species. With regard to the history 
of its propagation and economy the statements were so various and con- 
tradictory, that though he had such a mass of materials before him, Sir 
Joseph Banks was unable to reach any satisfactory conclusion.? 
~ Nothing can more incontrovertibly demonstrate the importance of 
studying Entomology as a science than this fact. Those observations, to 
which thousands of unscientific sufferers proved themselves incompetent, 
would have been readily made by one entomologist well versed in his 
science. He would at once have determined the order and genus of the 
insect, and whether it was a known or new species; and in a twelvemonth 
at furthest he would have ascertained in what manner it made its attacks, 
and whether it were possible that it might be transmitted along with grain 
into a foreign country; and on these solid data he could have satisfactorily 
pointed out the best mode of eradicating the pest, or preventing the exten- 
sion of its ravages. 
1 Young’s Annals of Agriculture, xi. 406. 
2 The American Entomologist Say was the first who satisfactorily determined 
the species and genus of the insect in question, Say on Cecidomyia Destructor, in 
Tourn, Acad, Nat. Sc. Philadelph., i.; and Kirby in Loudon’s Mug. Nat. Hist., i. 
