16 
was common in the fields on volunteer wheat plants in the same 
locality and also about La Fayette, Ind. In some fields it was ob- 
served breeding on the young growing wheat throughout the autumn 
and early winter up to December 13. On the 30th of December it 
was still to be found alive in the fields, though not in great abundance. 
EARLY RECORDS IN EUROPE. 
The first exact knowledge we have of this insect is its occurrence 
in excessive abundance about Parma, Italy, in 1847. Five years 
later, in 1852, Rondani, who described the species during this year, 
wrote to Prof. Bertoloni under date of June 14, also from Parma, 
relative to the insect as follows: 
We have in our city an innumerable number of insects of a species of the Aphis 
genus, of Linnaeus, of the order of Hemiptera. Sometimes and in certain places the 
number of these insects flying in clouds in the air has been so great as to render them 
troublesome to people, entering the nose, eyes, and even the mouth, when one can 
not think how to protect oneself from them. 
Elsewhere in this letter Rondani stated that he had never been 
able to find it on any but graminaceous plants, where it nestled on 
the leaves. In commenting on this letter of Rondani, Prof. Bertoloni 
took occasion to say that " innumerable specimens of the Aphis 
graminum Rondani are seen in the streets of the city of Bologna, and 
these have several times entered my nose and eyes when passing 
rapidly along the canal of Reno." 
KNOWN DISTRIBUTION IN THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE. 
Besides these occurrences in Italy and Hungary (see fig. 3), in 1884 
Dr. G. Horvath records an attack on oats in central Hungary, which 
took place in June, 1883, and 10 years later, in 1894, Prof. Carl Sajo 
records a second outbreak among growing oats, also in Hungary. 
Schouteden, in 1906, records the species from Belgium, but gives 
no further data except that it affects the Graminacese. 
Under date of October 7, 1907, Mr. H. Neethling, chief of the 
horticultural and biological division, department of agriculture, 
Bloemfontein, Orange River Colony, South Africa, in a letter ad- 
dressed to the United States Department of Agriculture, stated that 
the wheat aphis was one of the greatest scourges with which the 
farmers of his colony had to contend, nearly the whole crop having 
been destroyed by it for several consecutive seasons. Again, under 
date of September 28, 1908, the same gentleman stated that the pest 
had been particularly active that season, it being estimated that 
more than 50 per cent of the entire wheat crop of the colony had 
been destroyed by its ravages. This latter communication was 
accompanied by specimens of Toxoptera graminum as well as a small 
