STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
831 
JOINT-WORM FLY. ITS DEVASTATIONS IN VIRGINIA. 
The diseased appearance which this insect occasions in the 
growing wheat is so similar to that produced by the Hessian fly 
that many persons at first supposed it to be the same insect, it 
residing in the straw usually immediately above the lower joints, 
producing an enlargement or tumor in the straw at that point 
and causing it to become angularly bent and lopping down more 
or less. But the worm instead of residing in the natural crevice 
between the sheath and central stalk where the larva of the 
Hessian fly reposes, occupies a small cell in the substance of the 
sheath or of the central stalk, and the swelling or gall which it 
occasions, is of a hard, knotty and wood-like textuie instead of 
being soft and of a substance similar to that of the straw. 
It is in the central parts of Virginia, in the district around 
Charlottesville and Gordonsville that this insect has been most 
destructive. It began to attract public notice about the year 
1848. The first account of its depredations appeared in the 
Southern Planter, July 1851, from the pen of the editor, Frank 
G. Ruffin. He states that “ a new and most destructive enemy 
to wheat has appeared under the name of the Joint-worm. Many 
crops in Albemarle are hardly worth cutting in consequence of 
its attacks, and all that we have seen or heard of, except one, 
are badly hurt by it. In the area it has traversed, and the com¬ 
pleteness of its devastation within it, it has no rival amongst 
insects in this country. The dreaded Hessian fly is nothing to 
it; and no atmospheric calamity can pretend to a comparison. 
It sweeps whole districts, and everywhere, we hear, has done 
great damage, and it is feared will do much more before it is 
checked or destroyed.” This is followed by a communication 
from a friend to the editor, giving an account of the habits of 
the Joint-worm, so far as he had been able to discover them, and 
an extract from the proceedings of the “Hole and Corner Club, 
No. 1, of Albemarle,” embodying the experience its members had 
had with this insect, the situations where it is most destructive, 
the varieties of wheat which were the least injured, and the 
effect of guano and other fertilizers in withstanding it. 
The second article which was published on this insect, appeared 
in the Albany Cultivator, October 1851 (vol. viii, pp. 321-324). 
Mr. Alex, llives of Albemarle, transmitted to that widely circu¬ 
lated periodical an account of the habits of the insect, accom¬ 
panied with samples of the diseased green wheat containing the 
