Packard.] 
INSECTS OF THE GAUDEN. 
5 
cause nor the direction has hitherto been discovered. I was 
authentically informed that some persons employed in raising 
the steeple of the church in Williamstown, were, while stand¬ 
ing near the vane, covered by them, and saw, at the same 
time, vast swarms of them flying far above their heads. It 
is to be observed, however, that they customarily return and 
perish on the very grounds which they have ravaged.” In 
the western plains the long-winged Caloptenus ( C . spretus , 
Fig. 1 a) is still more destructive. 
I might also cite the annual loss sustained by the attacks 
of the wheat midge and Hessian fly, the state of New York 
having lost, according to Dr. Fitch, $12,000,000 worth of 
wheat in one year. 100,000 bushels of w T heat could be raised 
annually in the state of Maine if it were not for these two 
insects. Among the more formidable pests in the south and 
west are the cotton boll worm, army worm and the chinch 
bug, from which farmers annually lose thousands of dollars. 
For the greater or less abundance of insects, as one year 
succeeds another, one can readily understand that the vicis¬ 
situdes of the climate, the abundance of a particular kind 
of food, the temporary absence of parasites and external 
enemies are sufficient to account. But for the vast- numeri¬ 
cal increase of insects, which are ordinarily seldom observed, 
and whose lives at the most span but a few months or wrecks, 
we cannot so satisfactorily account. 
Moreover, there are great injuries received from the long 
sustained attacks, renewed annually, of insects such as the 
wheat fly and farm and forest insects. A late report of a 
committee of the French Senate, which we find translated 
into the “ Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal,” “states 
that the wire worm consumed £1 GO,000 worth of corn in 
one department alone, and was the cause of the deficient 
harvests which preceded 1856. Out of 504 grains of colza 
gathered at hazard at Versailles, all but 29G had been ren¬ 
dered worthless by insects. The reduction of yield in oil 
5 
