THE HESSIAN FLY IN BRITAIN. 
169 
All this is matter on record, but the anxieties and troubles of all 
concerned, on the appearance of a corn-pest which may be the cause 
of sweeping disaster here, as it has often been in other countries, 
are not so well known. 
It was on one of the last days of July in 1886 that, opening my 
letters as usual, I found in one an enquiry as to the nature of the 
specimens enclosed which were doing much harm to the barley of 
the sender. It needed very few minutes to see that there lay the 
“ flaxseeds,” the outward sign of the attack so feared for more than 
a hundred years that it had been watched for, and at intervals, by 
Sir Joseph Banks, Kirby, Curtis, and others, reported as not 
present. But now there lay the pests and what was to be done ? 
Where it is merely a matter of identifying a common insect of 
no specially injurious habits, it is well to let discussion go on at 
leisure, but it is a very different matter with a known crop-pest, 
where delay may allow of the brood shortly to be hatched getting 
hold in the country; on the other hand it is no pleasant task 
to bring forward the first intelligence of the arrival of such a 
guest. I need not enter here upon the details of work, the careful 
examinations and consultations on the ground and in the library, 
and the special and official communications resulting in the course 
of a few days in circulars of warning being issued, and what may 
be termed “ the danger-flag ” raised throughout the country. And 
not a day too soon, for reports soon came in of the presence of the 
pest on other farms near Hertford, near Bomford, and near Ware, 
and also from near Inverness and from Crieff in Scotland, but the 
mischief was done for that season so far as the growing crops were 
concerned, and we had to wait and watch for the future. 
Those who were concerned with the matter will remember the 
general interest excited, also the very various expressions of 
opinion, of which necessarily many of the most energetic came to 
the first recorder of the trouble. Some persons had no doubt that 
the pest had always been here, some on the contrary that it was not 
here now , and all such views had to be met as they arose ; some by 
quotation of contemporary record dating from before the commence¬ 
ment of the present century onward, and some by the simple proof 
from specimens in hand of the peculiar form of the puparia or 
flaxseeds, etc.; culminating in the fact that from the “flaxseed” 
the real Hessian fly had stepped out in all its characteristic beauties 
of crimson and black velvet, to subside into the sober livery of its 
common work-a-day dress. 
This was in the autumn of 1886, and so things went on, and 
spring and early summer passed of 1887, and the public hoped the 
affair was as it was termed “a scare”; but those who were 
watching knew that Hessian flies were developing from “ flax¬ 
seeds ” which had been kept under supervision, and though the 
little gnatlets were not noticeable in the fields, it was only too 
likely before long, that when the due number of days had elapsed 
for eggs to be laid and maggots grown, fallen barley and wheat 
straw would show where the invader had set its camp. 
