21 
During a long interval we meet with no further notices of this 
species. Its depredations would appear to have been so slight, 
and public attention was so much engrossed with other affairs, 
that nothing, as we have discovered, is recorded of it. 
At length, in 1817, it is stated to have renewed its ravages in 
various sections of the country. In the neighborhood of New 
York and of Philadelphia, it is evident that it was unusually abun- 
dant, and in parts of Maryland and Virginia, it was perhaps more 
destructive than it had ever been before. 
It was on the 24th of June in this year, that Mr. Say read be- 
fore the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences a paper en- 
titled “ Some account of the insect known by the name of Hessian 
fly, and of a parasitic insect that feeds on it.” This contains an 
accurate technical description of the insect, on which he bestows 
the name Cecidomyia destructor, and also of its most common 
parasite, referred by him to the genus Ceraphron, and also named 
destructor. ‘This paper was published in the Journal of the Aca- 
demy (vol. i., p. 45-48), issued in the course of the ensuing 
month, and was followed in August by a copperplate illustration 
of these insects, drawn and engraved by Mr. C. A. Le Sueur. 
“A local habitation and a name” were thus conferred upon this 
world-renowned species, by which it has ever since been definitely 
specified and arranged in works of science. 
In the American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review fo 
August, 1817, (New York, vol i., p. 275-279,) appeared a paper 
bearing the title, “An account of the wheat insect of America, 
or the Tipula vaginalis tritici, commonly called the Hessian fly.” 
This paper gives the substance of Judge Havens’s memoir, and 
professes to copy a technical name and description which had 
been published by Dr. Mitchell in the Wew York Gazette of July 
3d. But whoever refers to the Wew York Gazette, will find no 
attempt at a technical description, nor no name except that of 
Tipula tritici, which is in one instance, casually as it were, made 
use of. The word vaginalis is therefore an interpolation of the 
writer in the Magazine; and as he, at least on some subsequent 
occasions, refrained from bringing this name farther into notice, 
