754 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
HIDOB. AMERICAN HISTORY. 1864 . IMMENSE LOSSES FROM IT.’ ’ 
repaid the expense of harvesting, whilst those from which any- 
thing that could be regarded as a fair crop was obtained were 
few indeed. Over large sections of the State it was reported 
that not a third or a fourth of an ordinary yield was received. 
Robert Howell, Esq., writing me this year from Tioga county, 
says—“ This insect has done more mischief in this vicinity this 
year than ever before. A number of fields of wheat were not 
cut at all. The crop is not one-sixth of an ordinary one.” And 
the statements from many other places were of the same purport 
with this. The most authentic information probably that this 
subject is susceptible of was obtained by the State Agricultural 
Society, which, in gathering the agricultural statistics of that 
year, inserted in its circular the query : “ To what extent was 
the wheat crop in your vicinity injured by the midge ?” The 
Secretary of the Society informed me, that on getting together 
all the replies to this inquiry, and placing everything at the 
lowest figure, so as to be certain the estimate was within the 
truth, the wheat which this insect had that year destroyed in our 
State, at its then current market price, exceeded in value fifteen 
millions of dollars! This amount would be more than a third 
larger, if estimated at the price to which wheat afterwards arose 
that winter. Indeed, the more wo examine this subject the more 
we become impressed with the justness of the remark of Mr. J. 
Watson of Wayne county, who says, “ the loss or damage to our 
country caused by this yellow mite it is hard to over-estimate.” 
Through Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and along the eastern 
side of Indiana, the wheat is reported this year to have been cut 
off to a great extent by the midge. How it passed by Western 
New York and Canada West to reach these States and become 
so widely distributed over them, as it appears to have done, I 
know not. Its presence there, however, is too well authenti¬ 
cated to be doubted. Mr. Robert Richardson, who was familiar 
with thiB insect as it had appeared in my own vicinity, from 
whence he removed to Marion county in the central part of Ohio, 
this year (1854), informs me the larva) of the midge had been 
noticed in the wheat of that vicinity about five years, he was 
told, their numbers being very few at first, but gradually in¬ 
creasing, till this year they, made nearly a clean sweep of the 
crop. Many fields were not harvested and others were scarcely 
worth harvesting, one man obtaining but a bushel per acre. Mr. 
