834 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
APHIS. LONG KNOWN IN EUROPE. 
upon the leaves and stalks of the grain, I regarded it as a thing of 
no importance, and therefore gave no attention to it. Last year a 
letter, which I regret I have mislaid, from a gentleman, I think, 
in Columbia county, informed me of a reddish fly in excessive 
urib3rs on the oats in his vicinity, but I could find no such 
insect then on the oats in my own neighborhood. W. Freeman, 
Jr., of South Adams, Mass., visiting me soon after, mentioned a 
field of oats in that State in which ho had noticed a reddish aphis 
in surprising numbers. These facts show that this insect had 
begun to multiply excessively in some places last year. 
Early in May last, my attention was particularly directed to 
this insect for the first time. Rj^e and wheat sowed last autumn 
were then but a few inches high, and were just beginning their 
onward growth with the genial warmth of spring, when I noticed 
this aphis to be more common than any other insect, in every 
part of every grain field in my vicinity. Towards the close of 
May individuals having wings began to occur; and on thus hav¬ 
ing the insect in its most developed form, I ascertained it was a 
species which has from time immemorial existed upon the oats, 
wheat, barley and rye in Europe, and which was first scientifically 
named Aphis Avena, by Fabricius, a name literally meaning the 
aphis or plant-louse of oats. Kirby and Curtis describe it under 
the name of Aphis pranaria, both having overlooked the descrip¬ 
tion which Fabricius has given of it in his Entomologia System¬ 
atica, vol. iv, p. 214. Some of the German naturalists name it 
Ayhis cerealis, and one of them, probably from supposing the 
insect on barley different from that on oats, has entered it under 
the name Aphis Hordei. As it infests all other kinds of grain as 
well as oats, the “grain aphis,” rather than “ oat aphis,” will be 
the most correct and definite name by which to designate it in 
English. 
These insects, in growing to maturity, cast off their skins three 
or four times at least; and numbers of these empty skins, of a 
whitish color, were everywhere noticed among clusters of the 
lice. The insects themselves occurred in three very distinct 
forms upon the grain through the season: 1st, winged females; 
2d, wingless females, (these being much more numerous than the 
winged ones;) and 3d, young lice or larvae. Persons who looked 
at them very closely might have noticed a few individuals of a 
fourth form, namely, the pupae, which were to become winged 
