82C 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
MIDGE. REMEDIES. FOR DESTROYING THE FLIES. 
most, practicable and efficacious mode by which it was possible 
to combat this enemy and save the crop, and they accordingly 
noticed it with particular favor. I see a recent writer of our 
country, of a rather pretentious character, int roduces this measure 
to the notice of his readers as “a mode recommended in France.” 
I have therefore been more explicit in stating the above facts, 
lest this writer should suspect me of petty charlatanry in not 
informing my readers of the true source to which this measure is 
to be credited. 
I have repeatedly determined that I would submit the efficacy 
of this measure to a decisive test, by resorting to it upon the very 
first appearance of the flies upon the wheat and before they had 
deposited any important amount of eggs. But after the close 
observations made in several years. I become satisfied it is impos¬ 
sible to do this. This insect comes upon a wheatfield very much 
as the malignant cholera comes upon a city: at the first intima¬ 
tion of its presence it is found to be scattered everywhere. The 
flies appear to arrive in the wheat so suddenly and so overbur- 
thened with eggs when they come, that in a single night the 
whole field becomes stocked with the eggs to such an extent that 
it seems as though to destroy the flies then will be of little avail, 
the mischief being already so far under way. Thus I have been 
discouraged from resorting to this remedy, always thinking that 
by looking sharper another year I could discover the flies before 
they had deposited such numbers of eggs. And yet, on observing 
that their forces continue to augment for several days, and that 
they remain some weeks at their operations in the same field, we 
in the end become sensible that if they had been swept off when 
they were first discovered, the wheat would receive but a small 
fraction of the number of eggs with which it eventually becomes 
burthened. 1 therefore still think this measure may be highly 
efficacious. Every fly deposits a sufficient number of eggs, I 
suppose, to destroy three or four kernels. And as we know that 
millions of these flies can be captured by sweeping the wheat 
with a net, there is a strong inducement to resort to this measure, 
on the first appearance of the flies, and to repeat it in any parts 
of the field where they may afterwards be gathered in numbers. 
And if valuable parasites are at the same time upon the grain 
and are captured by the net, these insects as a general rule are 
so very much more active than the midge that by opening the 
