5 
our agricultural papers it is still spoken of as solely the Tipula 
tritict of Mr. Kirby. 
In this article, and another presented about a year afterwards 
(Trans, Lin. Soc. vol. v. p. 96), Mr. Kirby gives a large number 
of most interesting and valuable observations upon this insect, the 
correctness of which, generally, more recent investigations have 
fully attested. With regard to its abundance at that time, he says 
he could scarcely pass through a wheatfield, in which some florets 
of every ear were not inhabited by the larva ; and ina field of fifteen 
acres, which he carefully examined, he calculated that the havoc 
done by them would amount to five combs (twenty bushels). 
' From this time, we have met with no notices of the wheat-fly, 
except occasional references to the articles above mentioned, until 
the year 1828, when, and for a few of the following years, it again 
appeared in such numbers and with such havoc in several of the 
counties of England and Scoiland, as to elicit communications in 
the magazines from several writers. In some districts of Scotland, 
its devastations would seem to have approached in severity what has 
been experienced upon this side of the Atlantic ; for ‘Mr. Gorrie 
estimates the loss sustained by the farming interest in the Carse of 
Gowrie (the rich alluvial district along the Isla and its tributaries in 
Perth and Forfarshire) by the wheat-fly alone, at 20,000/. in 1827, 
at 30,000/. in 1828, and at 36,0001. in 1829” (Encyc. of Agric. 3d 
Lond. ed. p. 820. § 5066). And Mr. Bell, writing from Perthshire, 
June 24, 1830, says, “‘ We are anxious to have the present cold 
weather continue for another ten days, to prevent the eggs from 
hatching, until the wheat be sufficiently hardened and beyond the 
state which affords nourishment to the maggot. Another year or two 
of the wheat-fly will make two thirds of the farmers here bankrupts” 
(Gardener’s Magazine, vol. vi. p- 495). Mr. Gorrie, in a letter 
dated at Aunat Gardens, Errol, Perthshire, Sept. 1828 (Loudon’s 
Mag. of Nat. Hist. vol. ii. p. 292), solicits information “on the 
nature and mode of propagation of a fly which has this year de- 
stroyed about one third of the late sown wheat all over this country.” 
He describes a small yellow caterpillar, one eighth of an inch long, 
as numerous in the young ears of wheat, completely devouring the 
young milky grain, becoming torpid in about twelve days, and in 
six days more changing to a small black fly. In a subsequent com- 
munication, Aug. 1829 (p, 323), he corrects the latter part of the 
