STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
755 
MIDGE. AMERICAN HISTORY. 1855-1857. IN GENESEE TALLEY. 
J. PI. Klippart, Secretary of the Ohio Board of Agriculture, re¬ 
ports the wheat crop of the State this year to have been less 
than twelve millions of bushels, whilst it was over seventeen 
millions the preceding and nineteen and a half the following 
year. From this it will bo perceived that the amount of loss 
this year in Ohio closely corresponds with what is above stated 
ol' New York. 
The Canadas also suffered in the same manner. This and the 
following years the wheat is stated to have been much injured 
by this insect along the Saguenay river some eighty miles beyond 
Quebec, this being the most northern point of its extent within 
our knowledge. About this time we see it is also spoken of in 
Nova Scotia as being “ the most destructive of all wheat blight." 
In consequence of the disastrous results of the year 1854 much 
less wheat was sowed in 1855 and ’56, and the crops of those 
years in the eastern section of our State sustained but little 
injury. But in Canada the destructiveness continued without 
abatement, the loss there being estimated to exceed two and a 
half millions of dollars in 1856 (Hind’s Essay). 
The granary of our State, Monroe and Livingston counties, 
producing two and a half million bushels of the choicest quality 
of wheat, was now invaded. Mr. Wadsworth gives a succinct 
view of its career here, from which we extract as follows : The 
midge was seen here a little in 1854; it came from the east; 
more were seen in 1855, doing no material damage in Livingston 
but considerable in Monroe. But in 1856 the midge took from 
one-lialf to two-thirds of the crops in Livingston on the uplands 
and nearly all on the flats. At least two thousand acres, on flats 
which would have yielded thirty bushels per acre, were not har¬ 
vested. It was still worse in 1857, taking over two-thirds of the 
crop. And in 1858, of the white wheats there were very little 
to harvest. Spring barley also was very much injured this year 
by midge, in some fields half to two-thirds of the crop being 
taken. Very little white wheat is now sown in western New 
York and the midge has reduced the value of all the wheat 
lands at least forty per cent. Lands which sold here readily for 
seventy dollars can now be bought for forty dollars per acre. 
(Transactions 1858, p. 300.) No words of ours can add any¬ 
thing to this graphic picture of the doings of this tiny insect. 
In Canada the midge had in 1856 extended itself through the 
