5 
with the Hessian fly, than with any other insect of which we 
have any knowledge. Acquainted with it as our men of science 
in this country were, we are surprised they so readily and unani- 
mously succumbed to the sentiment that the species was indige- 
nous to America. 
In 1788, as we are informed in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 
(art. Hessian fly, § 5,) the Duke of Dorset addressed a letter to 
the Royal Society of Agriculture in France, enquiring if the Hes- 
sian fly existed in that country. “The report of the society was 
accompanied with a drawing of two insects, one of which was 
supposed to be the caterpillar of the Hessian fly, from its attack- 
ing the wheat only when in the herb; beginning its ravages in 
autumn, reappearing in the spring, and undergoing the same me- 
tamorphoses.” From an obscurity in the phraseology of the sub- 
sequent paragraph, and a reference therein to the memoirs of the 
Stockholm Academy, a doubt is excited, whether the society did 
not regard the Hessian fly as identical with the Oscinis frit (Linn. ) 
Lat., which infests the ears of barley in Sweden, and consequently 
whether the French species was not the latter. But, as the so- 
ciety regarded their insect to be the Hessian fly, it is somewhat 
singular that its history was not investigated and distinctly re- 
corded, before the announcement was so confidently put forth, that 
this species could not be found in Europe. 
But, more recently, clearer evidence upon this point is furnished 
us. Mr. Herrick, in his valuable article in Siliman’s Journal, 
(vol. xli., p. 154,) informs us, that Mr. J. D. Dana, who had been 
much associated with him in making a thorough investigation of 
the habits of the Hessian fly and its parasites, being on a voyage 
in the Mediterranean, “on the 13th of March, 1834, and subse- 
quently, collected several larva and pupa, from wheat plants 
growing in a field, on the Island of Minorca. "rom these pupa, 
were evolved on the 16th of March, 1834, two individuals of an 
insect, which his recollections (aided by a drawing of the Hessian 
fly with which he was provided,) enabled him to pronounce to 
be the Cecidomyia destructor. More of the perfect insects were 
evolved in the course of the month, one of which deposited eggs 
