760 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
MIDGE, POPULATION DIMINISHED By IT. 
labor to this crop. Though the insects are very few one year, 
they may be excessively numerous the following year. And 
from no circumstance can it be known at the time of sowing 
wheat whether the crop will bo remunerative or a total failure. 
Wherever the midge arrives it permanently remains, laying 
the wheat crop largely under contribution for its support, and 
rendering the cultivation of this grain too uncertain to be 
hazarded except to a very limited extent. Thus throughout the 
older settled portions of the Northern States and British Pro¬ 
vinces, the breadth of land sowed to wheat at present makes no 
approach to what was customary before this insect invaded us. 
Every farmer then made it a matter of pride to raise at least all 
he required for bread for his own family, and every district sent 
a considerable surplus each year to market. But in consequence 
of the presence of this insect, over all the New England States 
and all New York and Canada except their western parts, wheat 
has wholly ceased to be a staple product, and in its stead wool 
growing and dairying have become the leading pursuits. These 
require more land and fewer laborers than grain culture. And 
thus this insect has done much towards rendering our population 
stationary and declining, as it has been for a few of the last 
decades, in the rural districts through all the vast region alluded 
to. It has been one prominent cause of that extensive emigra¬ 
tion to the new lands of the west which has been going on during 
the past thirty years. Men have disdained remaining here, til¬ 
ling lands which would no longer yield them the bread they 
required for their own sustenance. And it is with a melancholy 
interest that we contemplate the changes which this insect has 
thus in many instances effected. Upon one of the Vermont hills 
within sight of my residence, from which in former years seven 
stalwart men regularly made their appearance at the militia 
musters and other public gatherings of their town, the hearth 
fires are now all extinguished, the humblo dwellings are demo¬ 
lished, and only the bleating of sheep greets the ear where the 
merry prattle of children was then heard—by a command as im¬ 
perative as that of the angel to Lot in Sodom, these men, one 
after another, having been impelled to seek elsewhere that bread 
for their wives and little ones, which they found they could no 
longer glean upon that hallowed spot, “wedded love’s first 
home.” 
