30 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
occurred to me that, by gathering the insects of our wheat fields 
here in the same manner, it would furnish materials for a very 
accurate comparison of the wheat insects of this country with 
those of Europe. As the result of a comparison thus made, I 
find that in our wheat fields here, the Midge formed 59 per cent, 
of all the insects on this grain, the past summer; whilst in 
France, the preceding summer, .only 7 per cent, of the insects on 
wheat were of this species. In France, the parasitic destroyers 
of the Midge amounted to 85 per cent.; while, in this country, 
our Parasites form only ten per cent. And after the full m- 
vestigation of the subject which I have now made, I can state 
this fact with confidence: we have no Parasites in this country 
that destroy the Wheat Midge. The insect so common on wheat, 
and which resembles the European Parasites of the Midge so 
closely that, in the New York Natural History, it is described as 
being one of that species, and in the Ohio Agricultural Reports 
it is confidently set down as another of them, I find has nothing 
to do with the Wheat Midge, but is the Parasite of an ash gray 
bug which is common on grain and grass, laying its eggs in the 
eggs of this bug, and thus destroying them. 
In my lecture a year ago, I stated to the Society that the 
Wheat Midge had wholly vanished the previous summer; not 
one of its larvae could I find, on a careful search, over an exten¬ 
sive district around me. But the past season this insect appeared 
in the wheat again as numerous as usual. This has led us into 
important changes in our views of the habits of this insect. 
How was it possible for it to utterly disappear from the wheat 
one year, and be back in it in swarms the next year ? Obviously 
it must have other places of breeding than in the wheat. And, 
therefore, if no wheat was grown in this country for a few years 
as has been so often proposed, it would not starve and kill out 
this insect. The insect would resort to these other situations, 
and would sustain itself there, returning into the wheat again 
as numerous as before, when its cultivation was recommenced. 
And what could it be that banished this insect from the wheat 
in 18G0, and brought it back again in 18G1 ? The remarkable 
difference in the weather of these two years furnishes an answer 
to this question. When the Midge Fly came out to deposit, its 
eggs in June, 18G0, the weather was excessively dry ; in 1861, it 
was very wet and showery. And thus we learn the fact that 
these flies cannot breathe a dry, warm atmosphere; they are 
