STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
833 
GRAIN APHIS. ITS EXTENSIVE APPEARANCE IN 1861. 
caliptera , or the Spotted-winged midge. I continued to meet 
with this species also, the following year, since which it too has 
wholly vanished from my vicinity. 
4 . Grain aphis, Aphis Avcncz , Fabricius. (Homoptera, Aphides.) 
Plate 1, fig^ 5 and 6. 
Clusters of reddish-yellow plant-lice on the heads of wheat, oats, barley and rye, some¬ 
times in immense numbers, stationed around the butt ends of the florets, sucking the juices 
away from the kernels and causing them to be more or less shrunken and light of weight. 
The excessive numbers in which the grain aphis, the plant- 
louse upon the heads of wheat and oats, has this year (1861) 
made its appearance in the Northern States, is truly remarkable. 
Although it is a common habit of plant lice, at times, to become 
extremely numerous on the vegetation they infest, we meet with 
no recorded instance in which one of these insects has been 
known to be thus suddenly and excessively multiplied over such 
a wide extent of territory. Hitherto this grain aphis has been 
so rare and scattered so sparsely in our grain fields that no one 
had noticed it or was aware that we had such an insect in our 
country. This year, over all the New England States, over all 
the State of New York, except its western section, through the 
northeast portion of Pennsylvania, and in several parts of Canada, 
every grain field has been invaded, and most of these fields have 
literally been thronged by it. 
Having forced itself so prominently into notice and excited so 
much alarm, I have already communicated notices of this insect 
to several of our agricultural periodicals, whereby a portion of 
what I here present has already met the public eye, particularly 
in articles which appeared in the Country Gentleman of August 
15th, and the New York Observer of October 17th. The insect 
will here be found more fully described than heretofore, and an 
account of the parasitic and other enemies by which it is des¬ 
troyed, is also here presented. Thousands of porsons have 
closely inspected these insects the past summer. What I shall 
state will recall to their minds several things which they observed, 
and will explain to many of them some of the phenomena which 
they noticed but did not understand at that time. 
Previous to the present year, in searching for injurious insects 
upon wheat, I have repeatedly seen this aphis. But as only a few 
ol them appeared to bo scattered about, singly, here and there 
[Ag. Trans.] 53 
