6 
like those of the Hessian fly. In letters, dated Mahon, April 8 
and 21, Mr. D. sent me five of the insects, and several of the pu- 
pe. They arrived in safety, and after a careful examination, I 
saw no good reason to doubt the identity of this insect with the 
Hessian fly. The Mahonese asserted that the insect had been 
there from time immemorial, and often did great damage both 
there and in Spain.” And further, “on the 28th of April, 1834, 
Mr. D. collected from a wheat field just without the walls of Tou- 
lon, in France, several pup and one larve like those before ob- 
tained. On the 4th of June, 1834, he obtained similar pupe 
from a wheat field near Naples.” We doubt whether there was 
living, at that day, two persons better qualified to determine the 
identity of these insects with the Hessian fly, than Messrs. Her- 
rick and Dana. ‘Testimony from such a source needs no com- 
ment. 
Finally, the year previous to that in which Mr. Dana made the 
above examination, it appears that the wheat crops in some parts 
of Germany, were seriously injured by an insect which was gen- 
erally regarded as the Hessian fly. M. Kéllar, of Vienna, in his 
treatise on injurious insects, (London, 1840, p. 119,) relates that 
in the autumn of 1843, complaints were made that the wheat on 
the estates of his imperial highness, the Archduke Charles, at Al- 
tenburg, in Hungary, had been considerably injured by an un- 
known insect, of which the following account was forwarded to 
the archducal office. “Till the end of May the wheat was in 
excellent condition, but about the commencement of June, the 
ears began to hang down, and the stem to bend, and in a few 
days patches appeared in different parts of the fields which were of 
rather poorer soil than the others, with the plants entangled and 
matted together, as though lodged by heavy rains... . . More 
than two-thirds of the straw was lodged in less than a week; and 
the heavy rains which fell in the latter half of June, so fully com- 
pleted the work of destruction, that the wheat fields looked as if 
herds of cattle had gone over them. The cause of this damage 
was sought for, and we soon discovered at the crown of the root 
of each of the wheat plants, or at the first joint, within the sheath 
of the leaf, whole clusters of pupe of an unknown insect. Those 
