256 
[Senate 
Us Foreign History. 
The first distinct and unequivocal account of the wheat-fiy, of 
which I am aware, is that given by Mr. Christopher Gullet, in 1771 , 
in a letter to Dr. Matty 11 On the effects of elder in preserving growing 
plants from the insects and flies,” which letter was published in the 
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society the following year.* 
♦ So long ago as the year 1768. Col. Langdon Carter, of Virginia, transmitted to the 
American Philosophical Society a paper entitled << Observations concerning the fly- 
weevil that destroys the wheat;” which was published in the first volume of the So¬ 
ciety’s Transactions, 2d edition, pages 274-287. The account here given, is in nearly all 
its particulars so strikingly applicable to the wheat-fly, that so much of it as relates to 
the insect itself merits an introduction in this place. He rather quaintly remarks, “ In a 
pleasant evening, after the sun was down, and every thing serenely calm, I found the 
rascals extremely busy amongst my ears, and really very numerous. I immediately in¬ 
closed some of them in a lightloose handkerchief; and by the magnifiers of my tele¬ 
scope, I took occasion minutely to examine them. They are a pale brownish moth, with 
little trunks or bodies, some trifle shorter than their wings; and as some of their little 
bodies appeared bulging as if loaded; I applied the pressure of a fine straw upon 
them, and saw them squirt out, one after another, a number of little things which I 
took to be eggs, some more, some less: some emitted fifteen or twenty of them; and 
others appeared extremely lank in their little trunks, which I could not make dis¬ 
charge anything like an egg. Whether they had done this in the field before, or were 
of the male kind, I could not tell; but from this discovery I concluded that there need 
not be above two or three flies to an ear of corn, to lay eggs enough to destroy the 
greatest crop. * * * It is with much propriety called a weevil, as it de¬ 
stroys the wheat even in our granaries; though it is not of the kind termed by natu¬ 
ralists the curculioj of which they have given a very long list; for it is not like a bug; 
it carries no cases for its wings; neither has it any feelers, with which the curculio 
is always distinguished; and perhaps (as I fancy it will turn out in the course of this 
letter that they never attack grain when hard) they really have no occasion for such 
feelers. For from the make of it, to my judgment, it appears an impossibility that it 
should ever perforate into a hard grain, being furnished with nothing in nature, from 
the most minute examination by glasses, that could make such a perforation; and 
seems indeed a fly itself, consisting of nothing sensible to the slightest touch with the 
finger, nor to the eye assisted with glasses, leaving only a little dry pale brown glossy 
dust on being squeezed.” 
I doubt not but that on perusing this extract, almost every reader who is conversant 
with our wheat-fly, which also is so frequently called “the weevil,” will feel confi¬ 
dent that it is the same insect to which Col. Carter alludes. Yet if his account be 
more particularly observed, we gather from it some characters which assure us that i^ 
was not the wheat-fly which he examined. Although he uses the terms moth and jly 
as synonymous, and no where tells us whether his specimens had four or only two 
wings, yet he could scarcely have spoken of the lively orange color of our wheat-fly 
as “ pale brownish ;” and what is yet more conclusive, his insect, on being pressed 
between the fingers, left “a little dry pale brown glossy dust;” whereas the wheat- 
fly leaves no mark upon the fingers, unless it be actually crushed, in which case its 
