502 
LEPIDOPTERA. 
we are not to understand tliat these are the only ones; for 
French writers inform us, that others are produced during 
the whole summer, and that the production of the insects 
is accelerated or retarded by differences in the temperature 
of the air.* When damaged grain is sown, it comes up 
very thin; the infected kernels seldom sprout, but the in¬ 
sects lodged in them remain alive, finish their transforma¬ 
tions in the field, and in due time come out of the ground 
in the winged form. 
To the foregoing sketch must now be added an account 
of an American grain-insect, which, in the first edition of 
this treatise, I suggested would prove to be the same as 
the Angoumois grain-moth. Having since obtained some 
of these American insects from various quarters, and having 
had a colony of them living and increasing, for three years, 
under my own eye, I find them to agree, in all essential 
particulars, with the European species. Until, therefore, 
they are proved, by actual comparison with perfect speci¬ 
mens of the latter, to be absolutely distinct, I must consider 
it as next to certain that they are identical, and that they 
have been introduced into this country from -Europe. Per¬ 
haps, hereafter, the mode of their introduction may be as 
satisfactorily ascertained as that of the Hessian fly. In the 
year 1768, Colonel Landon Carter, of Sabine Hall, Virginia, 
communicated to the American Philosophical Society at Phila¬ 
delphia some interesting “ Observations concerning the Fly- 
WeeHl that destroys Wheat.” These were printed in the 
first volume of the “ Transactions ” of the Society, and were 
followed by some remarks on the subject by “ the Committee 
of Husbandry.” This is the earliest authentic account of 
the insect that I have met with. The Committee stated, 
that “ it was said the injuiy of wheat from these flies began 
in North Carolina about forty years before, — and that they 
had extended gradually from Carolina into Virginia, Mary¬ 
land, and the lower counties of Delaware, but had not then 
* Olivier, Encyclop4die M^thodique, Insectes, Tom. IV. p. 115. 
