340 [Assembly 
of our agricultural journals for information respecting any particu¬ 
lar insect or other malady to which our crops or herds are subject, 
well knows what doubt and perplexity is often occasioned from hav¬ 
ing two or more names used by different writers for the same thing, 
and also from having two or more distinct things designated by the 
same name. To illustrate this, let us refer to the Patent Office Re¬ 
port for 1844, p. 26, where, in thirteen consecutive lines, we read as 
follows : “ Near Onondaga county (he wheat is said to be injured 
by the grain worm .In Schoharie we find complaints 
of the weevil .In Schenectady county the ravages of 
the fly were great.In parts of Columbia county it 
suffered from the maggot .In Dutchess a yellow worm. 
in the head destroyed it.” Of a truth, “what a host of enemies !” 
By way of climax, we only require some wiseacre who has never 
seen the insect, or lived within a hundred miles of it, to say, “ Good 
people, you are all wrong ; wheat worms is the correct name for 
your insect”—and we are furnished with a tolerably complete list 
of the popular synonyms of the Cecidomyia tritici ! But who, not 
intimately conversant with its American history, would suspect this 
single species of being designated by such a profusion of terms. 
Who, on reading the page referred to, of the Patent Office Report , 
(and it is a correct transcript of the very words which are in popu¬ 
lar use,) but would receive its statements as conclusive evidence 
that we had in eastern New-York at least four or five kinds of de¬ 
structive insects preying upon our wheat crops. Such mistakes are 
the inevitable result of a diversity of names. So important, there¬ 
fore, do we deem this topic, that we are induced to assign to it a 
distinct head. 
It is very fortunate that no confusion of the kind just alluded to, 
has ever existed with reference to the species under consideration. 
Its popular name. Hessian fly , was first bestowed upon it by Colonel 
Morgan, soon after its appearance on Long Island. Some two or 
three of the earliest writers allude to it by the names of Hessian 
lug, and Hessian insect, but these designations were speedily drop¬ 
ped, and Hessian fly became universally the only name by which it 
was definitely distinguished, not only in this country, but in all parts 
of the world where the English language was spoken. Even when 
it was by every one deemed to be a native insect, and the epithet 
