318 
[Assembly 
haps too brief and imperfect to justify a decided opinion, corres¬ 
ponds much more exactly with the Hessian fly, than with any other 
insect of which we have any knowledge. Acquainted with it, as 
our men of science in this country were, we are surprised that they 
so readily and unanimously succumbed to the sentiment that the 
species was indigenous to America. 
In 1788, as we are informed in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 
(art. Hessian fly, ^5,) the Duke of Dorset addressed a letter to the 
Royal Society of Agricu^ure in France, inquiring if the Hessian 
fly existed in that country. “ The report of the society was ac¬ 
companied with a drawing of two insects, one of which was sup¬ 
posed to be the caterpillar of the Hessian fly, from its attacking the 
wheat only when in the herb; beginning its ravages in autumn, re¬ 
appearing in the spring, and undergoing the same metamorphoses.” 
From an obscurity in the phraseology of the subsequent paragraph, 
and a reference therein to the memoirs of the Stockholm Academy, 
it would seem that the society regarded the Hessian fly as identical 
with the Chlorops pumilionis (Bjerkander) Meig.—a fly whose larva 
lives at the base of the stems of the wheat and rye, and which a 
few years before had been extremely injurious ter these crops in 
Sweden. A doubt is therefore excited, whether the French insect 
might not have been this latter species. But,as the society deemed 
their insect to be the Hessian fly, it is somewhat singular that its 
history was not investigated and distinctly recorded, before the an¬ 
nouncement was so confidently put forth, that this species could not 
be found in Europe. 
But, more recently, clearer evidence upon this point is furnished 
us. Mr. Herrick, in his valuable article in Silliman’s Journal , 
(vol. xli. p. 154,) informs us, that Mr. J. D. Dana, who had been 
much associated with him in making a thorough investigation of the 
habits of the Hessian fly and its parasites, being on a voyage in the 
Mediterranean, “on the 13th of March, 1834, and-subsequently, 
collected several lame and pupae, from wheat plants growing in a 
field, on the Island of Minorca. From these pupae, were evolved 
on the 16th of March, 1834, two individuals of an insect, which 
his recollections (aided by a drawing of the Hessian fly with which 
he was provided), enabled him to pronounce to be the Cccidomyia 
