62 
the best that had ever been proposed; we close it, persuaded that 
it is the yery worst. 
Brief Summary of the preceding History. 
The Hessian fly (Cecidomyia destructor of Say,) is a Euro- 
pean insect, and has been detected in Germany, France, Switzer- 
land and Italy, where it at times commits severe depredations up- 
on the wheat crops. Its ravages are alluded to so far back as the 
year 1732. It was brought to this country, probably in some 
straw used in package by the Hessian soldiers, who landed on 
Staten and the west end of Long Island, August 1776, but did 
not become so multiplied as to severely injure the crops in that 
neighborhood, until 1779. From thence as a central point, it 
gradually extended over the country in all directions, advancing 
at the rate of from ten to twenty miles a year. Most of the wheat 
crops were wholly destroyed by it within a year or two of its first 
arrival at the given place, and its depredations commonly con- 
tinued for several years, when they would nearly or quite cease; 
its parasitic insect enemies probable increasing to such an extent 
as to almost exterminate it. It is frequently reappearing in ex- 
cessive numbers in one and another district of our country, and in 
addition to wheat, injures also barley and rye. 
There are two generations of this insect annually. The eggs 
resemble minute reddish grains, and are laid in the creases of the 
upper surface of the leaf, when the wheat is but a few inches high, 
mostly in the month of September. These hatch in about a week, 
and the worm crawls down the sheaf of the leaf to its base, just 
below the surface of the ground, where it remains, subsisting upon 
the juices of the plant, without wounding it, but causing it to turn 
yellow and die. It is asmall white maggot, and attains its growth 
in about six weeks. It then changes to a flax seed like body, 
within which the worm becomes a pupa the following spring, and 
from this the fly is evolved inten or twelvedays. The fly closely 
resembles a musquitoe in its appearance, but is a third smaller, and 
has no bill for sucking blood; it is black, the joints of its body 
being slightly marked with reddish. It appears early in May, 
