259 
No. 105.] 
agricultural papers it is still spoken of as solely the Tipula Tritici 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 cor¬ 
rectness 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 wheat field, in which some florets of 
every ear were not inhabited by the larvae ; and in a 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, ex¬ 
cept occasional references to the articles above mentioned, until the 
year 1828, when, and for a few of the following years, it again ap¬ 
peared in such numbers and with such havoc in several of the coun¬ 
ties of England and Scotland, 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 
Cowrie (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 at36,000/. in 1829” ( Encyc. ofAg. 3dLond. 
ed. p. 820. § 5066). And Mr. Bell, writing from Perthshire, June 24, 
1830, says, u We are anxious to have the present cold weather con¬ 
tinue 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 Annat 
•Gardens, Errol, Perthshire, Sept. 1828, ( Loudon’s Mag. of JYat. 
Hint. vol. ii. p. 292), solicits information “ on the nature and mode 
of propagation of a fly which has this year destroyed 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 chang¬ 
ing to a small black fly. In a subsequent communication, August 
