686 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
HESSIAN FLY. 
the town of Sheffield, near the southwest corner of Massachusetts, made 
his way to the city of New York, where he gave information to the British 
authorities, of the condition of the country betweea the Connecticut and 
the Hudson rivers, one of the items of which is as follows: 
“ That no wheat is to be bought for the Continental money—nor for hard 
money under twelve shillings (probably New England currency, i. e. two 
dollars) a Bushel, which is more than double the old price prior to the pub¬ 
lic troubles. That many dread a famine, the last Harvest being short on 
account of a blast which was general thro’ the North country, and a fly 
which before the snow falls of this Winter devoured the green blades so 
that a part of almost every field, and some entire fields were perfectly 
eaten up and destroyed, and the fields in some instances resown or reserved 
to be ploughed up in the winter if the frost would permit or in the spring.” 
I think there can be no doubt it was the Hessian Fly, then newly arrived 
in the country and its habits wholly unknown, which occasioned the re¬ 
markable disasters to the wheat crop here stated to have occurred over the 
southwestern part of New England in the year 1719. What is here termed 
a blast in the wheat harvested that year was probably that shrinking of 
the kernels which the pupae or “ flax seeds” of the Hessian Fly cause when 
they are nestled at the lower joints of the straw, and which, if they were 
noticed at the time, would scarcely be suspected of occasioning this shriv¬ 
eling of the kernels, their location being so far distant from the heads. 
And the fly which destroyed the young green wheat in autumn to such an 
extent that many fields were plowed up and resown, was the succeeding 
generation of the same insects, nestled now in the roots and causing the 
young wheat plants to wither and die. This insect therefore, imported to 
our shores as we do not doubt in some straw landed at the west end of 
Long Island in the summer of 1776, and beginning to breed there in the 
fall sowed wheat of that year, in the course of three years or its sixth 
generation in this country, had become so multiplied and spread that it was 
destroying the wheat crop and exciting fears of famine over at least a 
considerable portion of the country between Berkshire County, Massachu¬ 
setts, and the city of New York. It thus appears on the outset of its 
career upon this side of the Atlantic, to have advanced to the north twice 
as rapidly as it did to the east, whilst to the south and west its progress 
tvas very much slower than in any other direction. 
As every fact relating to the first introduction of this important insect 
and its subsequent advance over our country merits to be carefully pre¬ 
served, and as the statement which I have quoted above was written six 
years earlier than any which I had before been able to find, and is probably 
the first allusion to the Hessian Fly in this country which is now extant, I 
have deemed it of sufficient consequence to be thus particularly noticed. 
The Earth-worm, Lumbricus terrestris, Linnaeus. 
The Earth-worm, the long, cylindrical, reddish worm, which is so very 
common everywhere in rich ground and is in such universal use as a bait 
