748 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
VIDGK. HISTORY ABROAD. IN 1828, IN SCOTLAND. IN FRANCK. 
to be known, except that the advance of science has since led to 
a separation of numerous generic groups from Tipula and Ichneu¬ 
mon , whereby these insects now fall in genera bearing other names 
than these. As we shall have frequent occasion to refer to these 
articles in the following pages, a more particular statement of 
their contents in this place is unnecessary. 
Little further notice was afterwards excited by this insect till 
about the year 1828, when, simultaneously with the commence¬ 
ment of its destructive career in our own country, it for a few 
seasons became very injurious in several parts of Scotland and 
England. East Lothian, so celebrated for its heavy crops, we 
see is stated by the North British Agriculturist to have yielded 
but fifteen bushels of wheat to the acre, in the years 1827-’8-’9- 
’30 and ’31, in consequence of the wheat midge and mildew, whilst 
the four following years, from 1832 to ’35, thirty-five bushels per 
acre was its average crop. (Cultivator, 1854, p. 69.) Its visit 
at this time elicited several communications in Loudon’s Maga¬ 
zine of Natural History and other periodicals, by Messrs. Gorrie, 
Bell, Shirreff and others, which were soon after followed by Prof. 
Henslow’s able account of it, in his Report on the diseases of 
wheat in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, vol. ii, 
and subsequently, in the sixth volume of the same publication, 
appeared the invaluable articles and illustrations of this insect 
and its parasites, by Mr. Curtis, to which we shall also have fre¬ 
quent occasion to refer. 
Upon the continent of Europe, the wheat midge appears to 
have been rarely met with and was scarcely known to exist there, 
at least as an injurious insect, till recently. In France it was first 
noticed in 1842, by M. Herpin, who met with yellow larvrn in the 
wheat cars, which were subsequently ascertained by M. Amyot to 
be this insect, as I shall more fully state hereafter. At several 
points in the north of France the harvests of 1854 and 1855 were 
unusually deficient. This untoxVard result was currently imputed 
to late frosts, fogs, excessive heat of the sun, and mildew. But 
M. Charles Bazin, of Fumerault in the department of the Yonne, 
upon directing his attention to this subject, immediately disco¬ 
vered in the wheat fields numbers of this yellow midge with yet 
greater numbers of another insect which appeared to be its par¬ 
asitic destroyer; and he became convinced that this was the 
chief if not the sole cause of the deficiency in their wheat crops. 
