9 
time ; and from that, as a central point, it seems to have extended 
in nearly all directions. In this vicinity, one hundred and twenty- 
five or fifty miles south of the locality above indicated, it was cer- 
tainly observed in 1830; and in 1832 the wheat crops were so com- 
pletely destroyed by it, as to lead to a general abandonment of the 
cultivation of this grain. Having spread east over Vermont and 
New-Hampshire, it in 1834 appeared in the State of Maine, and 
continued to advance in that direction, it is said, at the rate of twenty 
or thirty miles a year. Westward its progress would seem to have 
been less rapid, and along the Mohawk river by no means so gene- 
rally destructive. It is not till within a year or two past, that it has 
appeared in the Black river country east of Lake Ontario, as I am 
informed by an intelligent gentleman resident there ; nor until the 
present season that it has been so injurious as to induce in some 
instances a premature mowing of the crop, and preserving it for hay. 
Rumor states that farther west, in the wheat-noted Genesee country, 
it has been detected for the first time the present year. 
The history of its career, appears to be quite uniform in most of 
the districts hitherto visited by it. About two or three years after 
its first arrival at a particular locality, it becomes most excessively 
multiplied, and the devastations which it now commits are almost 
incredible. Though I believe that through unduly excited fears, or 
a hope of thereby destroying hosts of this marauder, a mowing of 
the crop whilst yet green, and a curing of it for hay, has often been 
resorted 10, when, had it been harvested as usual, a less sacrifice 
would have been made ; yet many cases have occurred, in which 
diligent search by different persons has failed to discover a single 
kernel of grain in any of the heads of an entire field ! 
This havoc, so extreme and general, though not universal (for 
some fields even now escape with comparatively little injury), lasts 
but one or two years. The numbers of the pest, and its consequent 
ravages, soon become sensibly diminished ; and after the lapse of a 
few seasons, the cultivation of the wheat crop is again found to be 
comparatively safe, and its yield only in isolated instances mate- 
rially lessened by the continued presence of the fly, which has now 
become probably a permanent inhabitant. 
It is commonly supposed that this rapid diminution in the num- 
bers of the wheat-fly has been produced by the general abandon- 
ment of the cultivation of wheat in this section of the country ; that 
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