16 
purpose of gathering information respecting the fly, and the best 
modes of withstanding its attack. Their account is published in 
the Pennsylvania Packet of August 21st, and is mainly occupied 
with a description of the Underhill wheat, and a full confirmation 
of previous reports respecting it. 
On the east part of Long Island, where, as already noticed, the 
fly arrived in 1786, it so rapidly multiplied, that the following 
year many fields were néarly destroyed, and this year, the third 
of its presence, the wheat crop “was cut off almost universally.” 
The red-bald, which was the common winter variety there raised, 
and the spring wheat, were equally affected. Rye in many fields 
was much injured, and a field of summer barley was wholly de- 
stroyed. (Havens, p. 73.) 
Wheat in large quantities, was at this period exported hence 
to Great Britain. Accounts of the appaling havoc that this m- 
sect was making, excited the attention of the government there, 
and aroused their fears, lest so dreadful a scourge should be intro- 
duced into that country, by means of the American grain. “The 
Privy Council sat day after day, (says Kirby and Spence, vol. i., 
p- 50,) 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 outports, re- 
specting 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 sensi- 
ble; and so important was the business deemed, that the minutes 
of the council, and the documents collated from, fill upwards of 
200 octavo pages.” In consequence of the information laid be- 
fore them, a proclamation was issued by his Britannic majesty, 
on the 25th of June, 1788, prohibiting the entry of wheat, the 
growth of any of the territories of the United States, into any of 
the ports of Great Britain. It is very singular, that although the 
entry of American wheat was thus interdicted, it was still allowed 
to be stored at the different seaports, thus affording the obnoxious 
insects, if any of them had been contained in the grain, a very _ 
