208 
five feet four to six inches high, very well headed, and seemingly 
good for from thirty to thirty-five bushels to the acre. I examined 
the field carefully in ten places, taking twenty wheat stalks as they 
stood in the drill row at each place, with this result: Number of 
stalks examined, 200; number of stalks containing the fly, 184, or 
two-thirds of the whole. Many of the stalks, however, had only one 
larva, and these will probably not be much affected. The insects 
are all of full size, of a chestnut color, and plainly visible in the 
lowest joint and the one next above—about twice as many were 
found in the lower joint as in the upper one. This, I suppose, indi¬ 
cates a loss to the crop of from 80 to 50 per cent. 
“We had heavy rains on the 8th, 9th and 10th of September, I 
think, which suspended the operation of seeding till the 12th or after.. 
This seems to be the dividing line, separating the fields badly damaged 
from those that escaped with little injury. In a part of the same 
field (potato ground) sowed, near the last of September, with the 
same kind of wheat, the number of plants examined was 100; 
affected with fly, 12. In other fields the rate was four to six to the 
hundred. 
“Many fields of Mediterranean are lodging. The Clawson stands 
well, and by reason of its stiff straw and vigorous growth promises 
to withstand the ravages of the fly better than the more feebly- 
growing and weaker-strawed sorts. 
“Arvine C. Wales..” 
Stark County, Ohio, June 7. 
Another extract from the Cultivator and Country Gentleman bears 
directly on this important point: 
“There is a dispute among good farmers whether wheat injured 
by the Hessian-fly is irreparably damaged. Mr. F. C. Root thinks 
it is, as he says when the central stalk is eaten out the plant is 
either dead or able to make only a feeble growth. If it makes a 
head, it will perfect only one or two seeds to a plant. Mr. Jesse 
Dewey qualifies this statement thus: If the land is rich enough . 
though the central stalk be injured, the wheat-plant will stool, and 
from its side roots send up stalks and perfect a fair crop. I have 
no doubt that both of these excellent farmers are right. On the 
great majority of fields, the injury to the wheat plant in the fall 
means the destruction of the crop. When the central plant has been 
injured, the side shoots have not enough vitality to perfect much 
seed. Yet there may be land rich enough to make a crop from the 
second growth, provided the Hessian-fly next spring is not numer¬ 
ous enough to do serious damage. Very much now depends on the 
character of the coming winter. A season which, under ordinary 
circumstances, would be favorable, may also save myriads of Hes¬ 
sian-flies. There was much more ‘crinkled’ wheat last summer than 
usual, and I have little doubt that the cause is to be found in the 
heavy mantle of snow, which preserved a greater number than usual 
of the Hessian-flies through the winter. The wheat crop this fall 
would have suffered more than usual in any event, but the evil has 
been greatly aggravated by the warm and generally dry weather 
after wheat-sowing. We had no killing frost until near November, 
nor frost of any kind until the middle of October. With frosts in 
