STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
825 
MIDGE. REMEDIES. FOR DESTROYING THE FLIES. 
may not bo obtainable except upon particular exertions. If spe¬ 
cimens of the living larvee of the Hessian fly, or of its parasite, 
were requested of me, though I could have procured them with 
ease some years since, at present I should be wholly unable to 
obtain them anywhere in my own vicinity. And the case is pro¬ 
bably similar in Britain with the midge and its parasites. 
It is only in places where these insects happen to be present in 
considerable numbers that larvae which are ichneumonized can 
probably be secured. 
Remedies. 
Those remedies for the midge which are of sufficient impor¬ 
tance to entitle them to a particular notice are of two kinds; 
those which have it for their object to destroy the insect, and 
those which aim so to cultivate the crop as to ward off and elude 
its attacks. 
It has been proposed to destroy the insect when it is in its fly 
and also when in its larva state. 
1st. Destroying the flies. When the flies make their appear¬ 
ance upon the wheat in such abundance as we usually see them, 
there appears to be but one mode by which it is then possible to 
save the crop from their ravages, namely, by destroying the flies, 
or expelling them from the field, before they have had time to 
deposit any considerable number of eggs. Yarious methods have 
been proposed for accomplishing this; placing lighted lamps in 
the field by night into the flame of which the flies may be 
attracted, setting stumps on fire with the same intention and that 
their smoke also may smother the flies, placing such fetid odors 
in the field as will drive the enemy away, &c. But none of these 
measures appear to possess sufficient efficacy to accomplish the 
end for which they are designed. 
In the early part of my researches, upon noticing what a throng 
of these yellow flies were gathered by the common entomological 
net on giving it a few sweeps among the wheat, it occurred to me 
that with a net of mere capacity it would be easy to sweep a 
whole field, and by doing this in the evening or on a cloudy day 
when all the flies are hovering closely around and alighted upon 
the heads, nearly the whole of them could be collected in the net 
and destroyed. No suggestion of this kind had ever been made 
before. It struck the French reviewers of my Essay as being the 
