590 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
to be found in Europe. That year, in two of the German principalities, 
the wheat crop was seriously injured by an insect so like the Hessian fly 
that M. Kollar, in his Treatise on Insects, published four years afterwards, 
pronounced it to be that insect, though others doubted his being correct 
therein. And the following year, 1834, Prof. Dana, of New Haven, who, 
in company with Mr. Herrick, had made the Hessian fly a subject of spe¬ 
cial investigation, on going into the wheat fields along the shores of the 
Mediterranean, at once detected this same insect there, both in Spain, 
Italy, and on the Island of Minorca. This discovery he communicated to 
Mr. Herrick, by whom an article on this subject was communicated to Sil- 
liman’s Journal--this being the first dissent on record to the then universal 
belief which had so long prevailed, that this insect did not exist in Europe. 
And finally, in 1851, along the banks of the Volga in Russia, the wheat 
crop was severely injured by an insect that we have quite conclusive evi¬ 
dence was the Hessian fly. This Volga insect is described by Col. Mots- 
chultsky, as a new species, like the Hessian fly of the United States in its 
habits and appearance, except that it is paler colored, and not black as 
Mr. Say represents the Hessian fly to be. Now when it first hatches from 
its pupa state, our insect is of a tawny yellow color, and I cannot but 
think that had the Russian entomologist kept his specimens alive, he would 
have found them within two or three days changed to black. 
These few facts, the appearance of this fly in Germany in 1833, along 
the shores of the Mediterranean in 1834, and on the river Volga in 1851, 
comprise all of the European history of this insect—an insect so rare in 
its native haunts that it is scarcely known to exist there, but on being 
brought to our shores has caused a loss to us of uncounted millions of dollars. 
The wheat midge also, it is probable, is doing more damage at present, 
in a single year, in the State of New York, than the total aggregate of 
the losses which it has occasioned in Europe. Mr. Curtis, in his papers 
on the insects affecting the grain crops of Great Britain, gives no intima¬ 
tion that a wheat field has ever been known to be so badly devastated by 
the midge or by any other insect, that it was not worth harvesting. But in 
this country we at the present time, have the midge throughout the north¬ 
ern and middle States ; at the south they have the joint worm ; at the 
west the chinch bug ; three insects in the different sections of our country, 
each destroying the wheat crop to an extent which appears to be unparal¬ 
leled by anything known of this class of creatures in our father-land. 
Nor is it in our grain crops merely—in our orchards, in our gardens, 
everywhere in fact, wo see similar evidences that “ America is the land of 
insects.” Look at the bark-louse of the apple tree, which, though common 
throughout the continent of Europe, has never shown itself as a serious 
evil there. But in this country, through a large district bordering on 
Lake Michigan, every apple tree has of late years been overrun and almost 
every tree has been killed by this very insect. 
It is unnecessary to recite further facts, of which there are many bearing 
upon the same point. Enough has already been advanced to show that 
our country, although so favored of Heaven in most respects, is more in- 
