t • 
[Senate 
/ IryV, 
THE WHEAT-FLY.* * 
Although several facts in the habits and economy of the wheat-fly 
had occurred to my notice at sundry times since its appearance in 
this vicinity, yet as my leisure for studies of this nature was wholly 
engrossed in other departments of the science of entomology, these 
facts had been observed in too cursory a manner to be of material 
value in preparing an account for the public eye. It has not been 
until the present year, that I have made this and its allied species 
ray particular study. And as some few interesting points still remain 
undetermined, ere a perfectly complete history of this insect can be 
given, I should be inclined still to defer preparing a paper upon this 
subject, but that I deem some of the observations already made of 
too much importance to be longer withheld, and am moreover very 
well aware that if no writer ventured to appear before the public 
until his investigations were so complete in every particular that he 
could exhaust the subject on which he wrote, very little would be 
published, and the world would have but a small fraction of that 
amount of information which it now possesses. 
It is necessary for me further to premise, that although we have 
two distinct species of wheat-flies, as will be fully shown in the 
sequel of this paper, to wit, the clear-winged wheat-fly (Cecidomyia 
Tritici of Kirby) and the spotted-winged wheat-fly , which has hitherto 
remained a nondescript ; yet as nothing is yet known of the habits 
and transformations of one of these as distinct from the other, through 
the body of this article the common name “ wheat-fly” will be em¬ 
ployed for convenience as referring to both these species. Future 
researches, however, may detect dissimilarities in their habits, and 
show that portions of the following account are true only with regard 
to one of these. 
♦ 
• The'following essay originally appeared in the American Quarterly Journal of 
Agriculture and Science, vol. ii, number 2; to the editors of which our acknowledg¬ 
ments arc also due for the illustration with which it is accompanied. The essay liaa 
been revised, and new paragraphs added by the author. 
