15 
candle in the room. The fly will enter in proportion to their 
numbers abroad. The first night after the commencement of the 
wheat harvest this season, they filled my dining room in such 
numbers, as to be exceedingly troublesome in the eating and 
drinking vessels. Without exaggeration, I may say, that a glass 
tumbler, from which beer had been just drank at dinner, had five 
hundred flies in it, within a few minutes. The windows are filled 
_ with them when they desire to make their escape. They are very 
distinguishable from every other fly, by their (having) horns or 
whiskers.” 
Accompanying Col. Morgan’s letter is a brief report, made by 
Thomas Clark, who, at the request of his neighbors had gone to 
Long Island, to gather correct information respecting the fly, and 
the means of escaping its depredations. He became well satisfied 
that the Underhill wheat was fly proof, and could be obtained in 
any desired quantities, at the moderate price of $1.25 per bushel. 
He also reports the interesting fact, that the fly had now become 
so reduced in its numbers on the west end of Long Island, that 
many of the inhabitants supposed there had been none the present 
year, though he himself saw it there quite common still. Since 
1779 their crops had been destroyed more or less every year, un- 
til the present. 
In 1788, a communication in Carey’s Museum (vol. iv., p. 47), 
from Buck’s county, Pa., informs us that in the vicinity of Tren- 
ton, N. J., so much as the seed sown would not be harvested. 
Many farmers had plowed up their wheat crops in the spring, and 
planted them wilh corn. The fly also in this year commenced 
its ravages in the state of Pennsylvania. “Near seed-time last 
year, many persons on the Pennsylvania shore saw the insect so 
thick in the air as to appear like a cloud, coming over Delaware 
river.”’ 
Following this communication, is a paper signed “a landhold- 
er,” who regards the eggs as laid in the grains of ripe wheat, 
and sowed with them; and proposes procuring seed from places 
not infested with the fly, as a remedy. 
Messrs. Vaux and Jacobs, farmers of Providence, Pa., in July, 
1788, made a tour through New Jersey and Long Island, for the 
