842 
ANNUAL REPORT OP NEW YORK 
black-legged barley fly. the diseased straw. 
obtained, some farms producing little more than the seed which 
was sowed. It formed the subject of several communications in 
the New England Farmer, in 1829 and the following years, of 
which the more important portions are extracted in the account 
contained in Dr. Harris’s Treatise. This disease of the barley 
had been prevailing for some years previous to these published 
notices of it, rendering the crop so precarious that in some places 
the cultivation of this grain had been abandoned. It was con¬ 
jectured that the insect which occasioned this disease had been 
imported from Bremen or some other German port, in some seed 
barley which was sown in the vicinity of Newbury, three or four 
years before 1829. John M. Gourgas, Esq., of Weston, Mass., 
ascertained that the worms in the straw were transformed to 
small flies, “ about the make and size of a small black ant, with 
wings,” which some persons supposed to be the same as the Hes¬ 
sian fly. Myriads of these flies were found alive in beds which 
had been filled with the diseased straw; and an opinion pre¬ 
vailed, that the troublesome humors with which many persons 
were at that time afflicted in some of the places where this straw 
was thus employed, ■were occasioned by the bites or stings of 
these flies, in consequence of which the straw beds which were 
found to be infested with these insects, were generally burnt. 
Mr. Gourgas (New England Farmer, viii, 299) gives the follow¬ 
ing description of the manner in which the growing grain was 
affected. When the barley is about eight or ten inches high the 
effects of the disease in it begin to be visible by a sudden check 
in the growth of the plants, and the yellow color of their lower 
leaves. If the butts of the straw are now examined, they will 
be found to be irregularly swollen and discolored between the 
second and third joints, and, instead of being hollow, are rendered 
solid, hard and brittle, so that the stem above the diseased part 
is impoverished, and seldom produces any grain. Suckers, how¬ 
ever, shoot out below, and afterwards yield a partial crop, seldom 
exceeding one half the usual quantity of grain. Mr. Gourgas 
further remarks, that the quality or soundness of the grain which 
is produced is not at all affected, the disease being seated wholly 
in the straw, in which, and not in the kernels of the grain, the 
eggs or seeds which perpetuate this malady from year to year 
arc lodged. 
Dr. Andrew Nichols, of Danvers, states (New England Farmer, 
