822 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
HESSIAN PLY. LARVA. 
long creases or furrows of the upper surface of the leaves of the 
young wheat plant. While depositing her eggs, the insect stands 
with her head towards the point or extremity of the leaf, and at 
various distances between the point and where the leaf joins and 
surrounds the stalk. The number found on a single leaf, varies 
from a single egg up to thirty, or even more. The egg is about 
a fiftieth of an inch long, cylindrical, rounded at the ends, glossy 
and translucent, of a pale red color, becoming, in a few hours, 
irregularly spotted with deeper red. Between its exclusion and 
its hatching, these red spots are continually changing in number, 
size, and position ; and sometimes nearly all disappear. A little 
while before hatching, two lateral rows of opake white spots, 
about ten in number, can be seen in each egg. In four days, 
more or less, according to the weather, the egg is hatched.” 
Prom the time this insect leaves the egg, till its growth is 
completed, no better account can be drawn up than that which 
is given by Mr. Herrick, which merits to be preserved in his own 
words, as follows. “ The little wrinkled maggot, or larva, creeps 
out, of the delicate membranous egg skin, crawls down the leaf, 
enters the sheath, and proceeds along the stalk, usually as far as 
the next joint below,” or, in other words, to the base of the 
sheath, which in the young wheat in autumn is at the crown of 
the root. “ Here it fastens, lengthwise, and head downwards, to 
the tender stalk, and lives upon the sap. It does not gnaw the 
stalk, nor does it enter the central cavity thereof; but, as the 
larva increases in size, it gradually becomes embedded in the 
substance of the stalk. After taking its station, the larva moves 
no more, gradually loses its reddish color and wrinkled appear¬ 
ance, becomes plump and torpid, is at first semi-translucent, and 
then more and more clouded with internal white spots; and 
when near maturity, the middle of the intestinal parts is of a 
greenish color. In five or six weeks (varying with the season,) 
the larva begins to turn brown, and soon becomes of a bright 
chestnut color, bearing some resemblance to a flax-seed,” <fcc. 
When freshly taken from the roots of the wheat the mature 
worm, (see plate 2, fig. 19,) measures about fifteen hundredths of 
an inch (0.15) in length, by about 0.0G in width. It shows no 
signs of life when placed upon paper and turned over with the 
point of a needle. It is soft, glabrous, shining, white, oval, and 
apparently composed of but nine segments, although when it is 
