4 
the account already given from Mr. Gullet, shows that it was known 
\ in England at least twenty-five years earlier than Mr. C. supposes, 
and anterior even to the date when the hessian fly was first observed 
in America. 
In 1795, as we are informed by Mr. Marsham, in a paper read 
before the Linnean Society, London, and published in their Trans- 
actions, vol. iii. p. 142, towards the end of July, Mr. Long had 
observed an insect that threatened to do much mischief to the wheat 
crops ; attacking one or more of the grains in an ear, and causing 
the chaff of these grains to become yellow or ripe, whilst the re- 
mainder of the head was still green. Mr. Marsham, on opening the 
chaff of these grains, found an orange-colored powder, and in many 
of them,one or two very minute yellowish-white or deep yellow 
larvee, the grain itself appearing to be a little shrunk. Mr. Markwich 
of Sussex also observed the same larve in his wheat, the forepart 
of August, but was confident they had done no injury to it. The 
same larve were also noticed by Mr. Kirby, this year, in Suffolk. 
In a subsequent paper from Mr. Marsham ( Trans. Lin. Soc. 
vol. iv. p. 224), we are informed that Mr. Markwich, July 12, 1797, 
saw the flies themselves, at rest upon the heads of the wheat, and 
also a few of the larve within the flowers ; and that awhile later in 
the season the fly appeared reduced in numbers, whilst the larve 
had become much more abundant. From heads of the wheat en- 
closed in a flowerpot, he reared the fly, and also its parasite ; the 
fly thus obtained having “spotted wings,” a fact which we shall 
revert to hereafter. . 
Following this account is an excellent article (p. 230) by the Rey. 
William Kirby, who has since become so well known by his various 
writings upon entomology. Mr. Kirby here gives a scientific descrip- 
tion of the wheat-fly, bestowing upon it the specific name tritici, by 
which it has been definitely distinguished by all subsequent writers, 
and correctly referring it to the genus Tipula of Linnaeus, a genus 
which, in consequence of the vast number of species afterwards 
discovered to be comprised under it, naturalists have since found it 
necessary to subdivide ; and the species in question at this day falls 
within that group to which the name Cecidomyia was given by La- 
treille, an arrangement concurred in by Mr. Kirby himself in his 
communication in Loudon’s Magazine of Natural History, vol. i. 
p. 227; and which I note thus particularly, as by most writers in 
