THE CULTIVATOR 
161 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
“In Agriculture, Experience is of great value— Theories of 
little, excepting as they are directly deducible from actual ex¬ 
periments and well attested facts.” 
The Hessian Fly, Wheat Worm, &c. 
EXPLANATION OF Fig. 80. 
1— Wheat stalk with the larva of the Hessian fly deposited— 
three of the stalks punctured by the Ichneumon, Ceraphron — 
natural size, 3-20ths of an inch.— a. a. larva and pupa. 
2— Section of the wheat stalk, with the larva magnified. 
3— Larva advanced to the pupa state, magnified. 
4, 5—Male and female Hessian fly, Cecidomyia destructor, 
magnified—6 antenna of the female.—7 antenna of the male. 
8, 9—Male and female Ichneumon, Ceraphron destructor, mag¬ 
nified.—10 antenna of the male.—11 antenna of the female. 
12, 13—Male and female wheat worm fly, Cecidomyia tritica of 
Kirby, magnified. 
14—Section of a grain of wheat with the young wheat w'orm 
within it magnified. 
Editors Cultivator —There is, perhaps, no period of our ag¬ 
ricultural history, wherein the ravages of the Hessian fly have 
attracted more attention than during this season; the memo¬ 
rial to Congress of the individual who professes to have dis¬ 
covered a remedy, and who is asking for a compensation; the re¬ 
ference of this memorial to the Committee on Agriculture at the 
very moment that efiorts are making to establish a National So¬ 
ciety; the observations of Margaretta Morris, attracting the at¬ 
tention of so many eminent men and so many acute observers, 
joined to the extent of the insect’s depredations, and to the ad¬ 
vancement of agricultural science in all its departments, except 
entomology, have combined to attract this attention. Among 
other contested questions, arising out of the discussion, is the 
•identity of this destructive race, C ecidomyia destructor of Kirby, 
with the wheat worm of New-England, the Cecidomyia tritica 
of the same author. The circumstance of the great Linnaeus 
making but one species, under the name, of Tirmla tritica , is it¬ 
self a strong indication of their identity. Whether future in¬ 
vestigations will enable us to restore the system and the 
nomenclature of this great Sweedish naturalist, time alone is 
to determine. I frankly acknowledge that I dislike innovations 
upon such perfect systems, and think, as the Hibernian would 
say, that the two insects are identical; but while we should 
frown upon all attempts by men of science to introduce new 
names for the purpose of extending their own pretended dis¬ 
coveries, we should be equally disposed to encourage accurate 
investigation into the true character, habits, transformations 
and operations of insects : 
“ The sacred sons of vengeance, on whose course 
Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year.” 
Having recently returned from a visit through a wheat coun¬ 
try where its ravages have been severely felt, and found that 
farmers have many more words than ideas respecting it; that 
there is much confusion in their views, some calling it “ the in¬ 
sect,” without ever thinking or inquiring whether there are 
two; others describing what is unquestionably the Hessian fly 
under the name of the “ wheat worm,” without knowing wheth¬ 
er the worm became an insect, and some vice versa; while some 
are ignorant enough, and they are no very limited number, to 
confound it with a coleopterous insect of the beetle tribe, known 
at the south as the weevil, which infests the granery and the 
barn,—I have wished myself entomologist enough to describe 
this depredator or depredators; and let future inquirers tel) 
whether the descriptions can be so reconciled as to make them 
either cogeneric or identical, but as I am not, and like all other 
men are prejudiced in favor of my own opinions, the attempt 
will only be an approximation to the truth. It is necessary to re¬ 
mark that the Hessian fly, ( Cecidomyia destructor of Kirby,) is 
the only one known south of latitude 40°. It is a singular fact, 
tending to the establishment of the affirmative of this question, 
that the Hessian fly and the wheat worm in the same stage of 
their existence, are preyed upon by a parasitic insect of the 
order Hymcnoptera, (four winged,) belonging to the genus Ce¬ 
raphron of Latriell e: “ This is frequently taken for the wheat fly 
or Hessian fly,from the circumstance of its being frequently found 
in vast numbers during the devastations committed by that in¬ 
sect, and many have been deceived by the specious circumstance 
of its evolution from the pupa of the Hessian fly under their own 
eye ;” when in truth it is the only protector we have from the 
total destruction of our wheat by the rapid increase of the fly, 
and belongs to that vast class of insects included byLinnseus 
under the name of Ichneumon; this insect deposits her eggs in 
the larva of the Hessian fly,through a puncture made by her acute 
oviduct in the stem of the wheat; and this puncture has given 
rise to the opinion, and in fact furnished the whole ground for it, 
that the Hessian fly pierces the wheat stalk for the purpose of 
depositing its egg in the manner I have endeavored to deline¬ 
ate in the above figure, when it is the invariable evidence of the 
destruction of the fly, and of the birth of its deadliest foe : and 
is indeed a wonderful display of that instinctive faculty by 
which the genus Ceraphrcn is enabled to find the true place of 
deposit, where her young, protected by the indurated covering 
of the fly in its pupa or flaxseed state, feeds securely until the 
latter is killed. If the weather happens to be unfavorable to 
the Ichneumon, or if any other cause prevents its effecting this 
operation at the proper period, the following season is always 
a dreadful one to the wheat grower, as the fly upon an average 
has about eight or ten young, whose ravages over the whole 
face of the wheat growing region are commensurate with their 
increased numbers. 
In the British Farmer’s Magazine, vol. 3, p, 493, we are told 
that the larva of the Cecidomyia tritica, the acknowledged wheat 
fly of New-England, are preyed upon by the Ceraphron, an Ich¬ 
neumon fly, which deposits its eggs in the body of the larvas of 
the wheat fly. “ I could not determine,” says the very accurate 
author of that article, “ whether it actually deposits its egg in 
the maggot’s body; but there can be no doubt of the Ichneumon 
piercing the maggot with a sting : and from stinging the same 
maggot repeatedly, it is probable the fly delights to destroy the 
maggots, as well as to deposit eggs in their bodies.” We shall 
see presently that the use of the words larva and maggot in the 
above extract, indicate strongly, that if the writer has not the 
Hessian fly before him, he has any thing but the wheat worm of 
New-England; and he uses the terms “ Cecidomyia tritica” in 
the same sentence. 
I think myself fully justified in asserting, that the puncture 
so often observed in the wheat stalk, is made only by the Ich¬ 
neumon, because I have frequently been with Thomas Say, 
when pursuing his investigations upon this insect, and have 
seen and assisted in stripping down the glume or leaf of the 
wheat stalk, examining the dead or punctured larva, and the 
living Ceraphron; and the circumstance furnishes additional 
testimony to the truth of Margaretta Morris’ discovery, that the 
fly deposits its egg on or in the grain, and not in the stalk. It 
seems indeed impossible that the Hessian fly should effect the 
latter object without puncturing the stalk or stripping down 
the leaf; but it is not so clear an impossibility that it should 
be lain in the root. Whether laid on the kernel or in the root, 
it must have grown with the growth of the plant; and if in the 
latter, it will probably be found more difficult to provide a 
remedy. If the Hessian fly and wheat fly both deposit their eggs 
on the grain, it shows that some of their habits are similar, and 
that the ova most probably passes through the same process in 
its transformations. 
I frankly acknowledge that Margaretta Morris’ observations 
received no favor in my eyes. I thought it so well ascertained 
that the Hessian fly deposited its egg in the stalk or culm, that her 
conclusions excited ridicule rather than conviction. Having 
been so much in the company of Say, and having relied so much 
upon his accurate habits of investigation, my faith was not to 
be shaken by a woman; but it is not the first time men have 
been compelled to yield to the other sex : and the principal diffi¬ 
culty that remains is, that the Hessian fly has not been seen in 
the state of a worm, nor the wheat fly in the stalk or culm, by 
any person who is willing to become voucher for the fact. The 
insect, whose operations she watched so attentively, may there¬ 
fore have been the Cecidomyia tritica, which, it is notoriously 
the opinion of all New-England, deposits its egg on or in the 
berry; and then, “credat judeas appella,” makes its next ap¬ 
pearance in the shape of long, thin infusoria, their bodies, in 
the earliest stage gelatinous, semi-transparent, homogenous, 
contractile, without vertebra, or radiated tentacula, feeding in 
the berry until it is all eaten. While on the contrary, the Hes¬ 
sian fly in all its earlier stages is found within the stalk; its 
larva when first produced from the ova, is white, its tail very 
acute, and abruptly attenuated, the head incurved ; the upper 
surface of the body exhibiting a glassy or hyaline aspect, with 
an internal viscera like a greenish line; underneath it shows 
thick white clouds, which as it advances to the pupa or flax¬ 
seed state, becomes united so as to exhibit regular transverse 
segments ; when taken from its early membranaceous covering 
it seems perfectly inert; but when the pupa is advanced to its 
full stature, and assumes a dark reddish brown color, like flax¬ 
seed, with its jointed covering firmly knit together, I have 
known it to start and roll over several times on being removed 
from the wheat stalk. If the insect whose habits were thus 
watched by Margaretta Morris, was observed by her from the 
time of depositing its egg until it became a larva in the culm or 
stalk, or if its progress was marked from the latter state until 
the egg was deposited on the berry, so as to say with certainty 
that it was deposited by the same insect that was hatched from 
the larva that occupied the culm, then I think the identity of the 
two is placed almost beyond controversy. It is plain that the 
writer in the British Magazine could not have applied the terms 
maggot and larva to the worms described by Judge Buel. 
We have now arrived at what seems an imsuperable impedi¬ 
ment to recognizing the two insects as congeneric, viz.: the 
birth from the ova, of a living active worm in the one 
case, and of an inert vertebrated larva in the other; and 
I must be permitted here to make the remark, with perfect defer¬ 
ence to the judgment, the accurate observation and excellent 
intention of that great and good man, Judge Buel, that he has 
largely contributed to circulate erroneous views upon this im¬ 
portant subject. In looking over the early volumes of the Cul¬ 
tivator, I find all his information derived from others ; most of 
it from British writers, and some from very inaccurate corres¬ 
pondents—not one syllable from a man of scientific investiga¬ 
tions. In vol. 1, p. 82, he considers the wheat worm as ovipa¬ 
rous ; and even goes so far as to dispute the existence of a fly 
altogether, giving from authorities nearly forty years back, 
drawings of the full grown worm, in the very act of laying its 
eggs within the kernel of the wheat where it had attained ma¬ 
turity. The whole of this article commending and adopting a 
report to some English Society, said to be from the pen of Mr. 
Bauer, is evidently a labored effort, not to identify the wheat 
fly or Cecidomyia tritica, (whose existence is disputed,) with 
the insect then’making such disastrous displays of its power; 
but to show that the injury was not to be imputed to any thing 
belonging to the class insecta. That the Judge was soon 
obliged to modify this opinion is manifest from the subsequent 
numbers of the same vol. p. 115, where he confounds it, through 
the agency of a correspondent, with the weevil; and in vol. 3, 
p. 65, he admits it to be a snuff-brownfly, and says it is some¬ 
times confounded with the weevil; and finally on p. 118, he arrives 
at the same conclusion as other naturalists, and makes it a fly, 
depositing its eggs on the wheat, but dropping when in the pupa 
state upon the ground where it remains during the winter. As 
all the prevalent notions of the wheat worm deriving its exist¬ 
ence from the wheat fly, have originated from this or some 
equally loose foundation, without any accurate or properly au¬ 
thenticated investigation, I shall take the liberty of thinking 
that the wheat worm is the Ascius pumilarius, which is said to 
have been so destructive in Scotland in the year 1830, (Country 
Times, May 17, 1830.) I place all the flies that infest the wheat, 
if indeed there are more than one, under the order Diptera. 
Mr. Bauer (and Judge Buel endorses his opinion) calls his worm 
the Vibrio tritica, which in plain English, means a fly vibrating 
or quivering over the wheat ,—and at the same time furnishes a 
plate of a worm laying its egg in the grain, and surrounded by 
its young brood, as described in the figure ; the Judge naturally 
enough adopting the figure and rejecting the Latin, cautions 
his readers against the opinion of a fly originating so much mis¬ 
chief and argues in favor of the worm. 
But the whole argument derived from the deposit of larva in the 
one case, and of a living animate being in the other, may be put 
on the debtor side of our profit and loss account, when we know 
that there are a considerable number of insects of the order Dip¬ 
tera, and a large number of the Vibrio, that are oviparous and 
viviparous in the same stage or period oftheir existence,i. e. they 
produce young ones alive in the spring, and then lay eggs till 
autumn. Whether the Hessian fly or the wheat fly possess this 
power, 1 am not naturalist enough to decide ; that they neither 
of them produce living animated contractile worms, lam fully 
satisfied, as well from all the analogies of nature as from the 
writings of those who favor such an opinion in the columns of 
the Cultivator. They have had no more success in convincing 
me of such an opinion, than they would have had if they had 
traced the genealogy of the House of Hapsburgh—or the trans¬ 
mutation of wheat and chess to the same source. When the 
two insects attain what is called the perfect or fly state, they 
are so exactly-similar tha t I am at a loss to make the necessary 
distinctions; and if there is any, it probably arises from the one 
being hatched from the ova and larva in the grain of the wheat 
the same season, and the other remaining over the winter, and 
growing with the wheat stalk. The following very significant 
remark of Say, who had Kirby’s Entomology before him, is 
worth noticing upon this subject: “When several of them (Cc- 
cidomyia destructor ) are contiguous on the same plant, the 
pressure on the body of the larva is unequal, and an inequality 
in the form of the body is the consequence.” 
It is admitted by all scientific writers, that in both species of 
the Cecidomyia, the attenna are filiform,with joints subequal and 
globular; wings incumbent and horizontal, and proboscis 
salient or moving with a snap; their legs and poisers the 
same in form and number. Having myself never seen any but 
what I thought the same insect, and having no compound mic¬ 
roscope, but only a small magnifying glass, my description 
of the Hessian fly would of course be not very minute, but 
the head and thorax are black; wings ciliate dark brown, longer 
than the body ; the abdomen itself is brown and is covered 
with short black hairs. This description is from the living 
specimen. Now what says Kirby, who describes both insects, 
and every other writer who undertakes to describe the Ceci¬ 
domyia tritica —that the head and thorax are black, body of 
a dark orange hue —wings brownish, fringed with slender hairs, 
incumbent and horizontal; shorter and wider than those of the 
Hessian fly and approaching more to the sub-oval; the whole 
insect somewhat less than the Hessian fly. He represents it as 
having a sting or puncturing instrument, which we have not yet 
detected in the Hessian fly, but which it is very probable the 
latter also possesses. 
If I should follow the example of Judge Buel, reject the wri¬ 
tings and adopt the drawing of the wheat head from Kirby, it 
would be easy to show that every worm delineated in the wheat 
is a true larva of a fly ; the jointed segments, membranaceous 
covering, and general aspect indicate this very strongly ; and 
the circumstance of its being preyed upon by the Ichneumon, 
corroborates the opinion. Holkham. 
Friendsville, Pa. 7 mo. 20, 1841. 
Buckwheat, Rye and Clover. 
Messrs. Gaylord & Tucker —Having made an experiment 
with a triple crop, it may not be uninteresting to some of your 
readers to give a few particulars thereof, and the result. In the 
beginning of August last year, I sowed with the same prepara¬ 
tion of ground, buckwheat, rye, and clover. All which have 
done well; so that I am going at this time more largely into this 
mode of culture. Part of a field I have just covered with wheat 
instead of rye as the third article. I was encouraged to do this 
from observing that a few stools of wheat, that accidentally 
sprung up last year among the buckwheat, rye and clover, 
were fine. 
But in particular. I manured a poor, worn out sandy quar¬ 
ter of an acre, with five cart loads of compost, and having first 
sowed and harrowed in the rye and buckwheat, I then sowed 
the clover seed while the ground was fresh stirred. Next I 
covered a part of the quarter acre (selected for a particular 
experiment,) with pine leaves, a part with green pine boughs— 
and a part I left uncovered—and here I observe that all three 
grew best on the part covered with pine straw, and better on 
that covered with the green boughs than where uncovered. 1 
sowed this piece on the 5th day of August last, and on the 6th 
of October, or in two months, I cut the buckwheat and the pro¬ 
duct was 5j bushels or rate of 22 bushels per acre. The rye cut 
in June last, was a good yield, but through an inadvertence was 
neglected to be measured. The clover was near knee high when 
the rye was cradled and will yield a fine swath for seed, novr 
nearly ripe. So with the clover in another field sowed in like 
manner. I hope next year to report favorably of that sowed 
as above stated this season. In mean time, yours, &c. 
SIDNEY WELLER. 
Brinkleyville, Halifax Co. N. C.Aug. 6, 1841. 
Use of Lime. 
Messrs. Editors— I have been induced to take my pen, by 
reading an account of experiments in the use of lime, by your 
correspondent at Tivoli, (N. Y.) which appeared in the number 
for July, of the current volume. He has used lime until satis¬ 
fied on that subject. He does not state the quantity per acre, 
hut says there was no perceptible difference between the limed 
and unlimed crops. Lime has been used considerably in this 
place, and has seldom or never failed of paying the expense of 
getting it, if used on the spring grains or clover. On potatoes it 
does but little good in comparison with what it can do on corn 
or oats Wheat and rye, if sown on the first application, will 
show but little difference,if any,and it is a prevailing opinion here 
that it does no good to these crops. Let your correspondent try 
it on corn, and follow that with wheat. By that time the lime 
will have begun to act strongly on the vegetable matter al- 
readv in the ground. If then he can see no difference between 
the limed and the unlimed, we have only to say his land is not 
the right sort to put lime on. 
Lime here acts more beneficially on land that is naturally 
quite dry. Therefore, if he puts it on high land, at the rate of 
from fifty to eighty bushels to the acre, I think he can hardly 
fail of seeing the difference, unless his land is now strongly im- 
nregnated with limestone. Here such land is but little bene¬ 
fited. I*. Y. O. 
Walnut Grove, N. J. August 14, 1841. 
