HISTORY OF THE HESSIAN FLY. 
569 
appears, however, that the same insect, or one exactly like 
it in habits, had been long known in the vicinity of Geneva; 
an account of it may be found in Duhamel’s “ Practical 
Treatise of Husbandry,” ^ and in a communication f made 
to the Duke of Dorset, in 1788, by the Royal Society of 
Aiiriculture of France. 
In the year 1833 the wheat in Austria and in Hungary 
was considerably injured by an insect of the same kind, 
supposed to be the Hessian fly by the Baron Kollar. J More¬ 
over, Mr. E. C. Herrick, of New Haven, Connecticut, has 
published an account § of the discovery of the true Hessian 
fly, by Mr. James D. Dana, in Minorca, near Toulon in 
France, and in the vicinity of Naples, in the year 1834. 
Nothing has yet been found relative to the existence of the 
Hessian fly in America before the Revolution. It was first 
observed in the year 1776, in the neighborhood of Sir Wil¬ 
liam Howe’s debarkation on Staten Island, and at Flat Bush, 
on the west end of Long Island. Having multiplied in 
these places, the insects gradually spread over the southern 
parts of New York and Connecticut, and continued to pro¬ 
ceed inland at the rate of fifteen or twenty miles a year. 
They reached Saratoga, two hundred miles from their origi¬ 
nal station, in 1789. Dr. Chapman says, that they were 
found west of the Alleghany Mountains in 1797 ; from their 
progress through the country, having apparently advanced 
about thirty miles every summer. Wheat, rye, barley, and 
even timothy grass, were attacked by them; and so great 
were their ravages in the larva state, that the cultivation of 
wheat was abandoned in many places where they had estab¬ 
lished themselves. II 
* Page 90 (4to, Lend., 1759). See also his Elements of Aginculture, Vol. I. p. 
269 (8vo, Lond., 1664). 
i Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Dobson’s Encyclopaedia, Vol. VIII., Article 
Hessian Fly. 
I Treatise, pp. 118, 119. 
§ Silliman’s American Journal of Science, Vol. XLI. p. 153. 
II Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Dobson’s Encyclopaedia, Vol. VIII., Article 
Hessian Fly 
72 
