17 
convenient opportunity to escape and make their way into the 
country! 
When the news of the closing of the British ports against Ame- 
rican wheat reached this country, the measure was at once re- 
garded as having resulted from misinformation respecting the habits 
of this insect. The supreme executive council of Pennsylvania 
immediately addressed a letter to the Philadelphia Society for Pro- 
moting Agriculture, requesting the society to investigate and re- 
port to the council the nature of the Hessian fly, and particularly 
whether the quality of the grain is affected by it. The society 
promptly replied, “that from every communication made to them 
on that subject, they are decidedly of opinion that it is the plant 
of the wheat alone, that is injured by this destructive insect, that 
what grain happens to be produced from such plants, is sound and 
good, and that this insect is not propagated by sowing wheat 
which grew on fields infected with it.” They also refer to the 
letters of Col. Morgan, and of Messrs. Vaux and J acobs, as con- 
taining the best information extant, relative to the natural history 
of the insect, and the most successful method of preventing its 
depredations. (Carey’s Museum, vol. iv., p. 244.) 
' Dr. Currie took an active part in showing the government and 
people of England, that the information which had led to the 
closing of the ports against the entry of American grain, was wholly 
erroneous; and in eight or ten months the government bought the 
stored wheat at prime cost, kiln-dried it, and resold it at great 
loss. The prohibition was taken off almost immediately thereaf- 
(Memoir of Currie, ii., 65.) 
The Hessian fly “ reached Saratoga, two hundred miles (north) 
from their original station, in 1789,” says Dr. Harris, though on 
what authority is not stated. Of its correctness, however, there 
is no doubt. From the statements of several persons who were 
residing in Washington and Saratoga counties so long ago as this 
date, it appears that the crops in this district of country, (at that 
day second to no other in the quantity of wheat which it pro- 
duced,) first began to fail about the year 1790 or 1791. The in- 
sect reached here by a regular progress from the south, coming 
nearer and nearer each successive year. It continued to infest 
