members of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, the celebrated Duhamel du Monceau and Mr. Tillet, were then commissioned to visit the province of Angoumois, and inquire into the nature of this destructive insect. The result of their inquiries was communicated to the Academy, in whose history and memoirs it may be found, and was also subsequently republished in a separate volume.* From this work, and from the "Mémoires" of Réaumur, the following particulars are derived. The Angoumois grain-insect, in its perfected state, is a little moth, of a pale cinnamon-brown color above, having the lustre of satin, with narrow broadly fringed hind wings of an ashen or leaden leaden color, two threadlike antennæ, consisting of numerous bearded joints, a spiral tongue of moderate length, and two tapering feelers, turned over its head. It lays from sixty to ninety eggs, placing them in clusters of twenty or more on a single grain. From these are hatched, in from four to six days, little wormlike caterpillars, not thicker than a hair. These immediately disperse, and each one selects for itself a single grain, and burrows therein at the most tender part, commonly the place whence the plumule comes forth. Remaining there concealed, it devours the mealy substance within the hull; and this destruction goes on so secretly, as only to be detected by the softness of the grain or the loss of its weight. When fully grown this caterpillar is not more than one fifth of an inch long. It is of a white color, with a brownish head; and it has six small jointed legs, and ten extremely small wart-like proplegs. Having eaten out the heart of the grain, which is just enough for all its wants, it spins a silken web or curtain to divide the hollow, lengthwise, into two unequal parts, the smaller containing the rejected fragments of its food, and the larger cavity serving instead of a cocoon, wherein the insect undergoes its transformations. Before turning to a chrysalis it gnaws a small hole nearly or quite through the hull, and sometimes also through the chaffy covering of the grain,

"Histoire d'un Insecte qui dévore les grains de l'Angoumois." 12mo. Paris, 1762. See also "Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences," Année 1761, p. 66, and "Mémoires," p. 289, 4to. Paris, 1763.

through which it can make its escape easily when it becomes a winged moth. The insects of the first, or summer brood, come to maturity in about three weeks, remain but a short time in the chrysalis state, and turn to winged moths in the autumn, and at this time may be found, in the evening, in great numbers, laying their eggs on the grain stored in barns. and granaries. The moth-worms of the second brood remain in the grain through the winter, and do not change to winged insects till the following summer, when they come out, fly into the fields in the night, and lay their eggs on the young ears of the growing grain. Although there seem to be two principal broods in the course of a year, we are not to understand that these are the only ones; for French writers inform us, that others are produced during the whole summer, and that the production of the insects is accelerated or retarded by differences in the temperature of the air. When damaged grain is sown it comes up very thin; the infected kernels seldom sprout, but the insects lodged in them remain alive, finish their transformations in the field, and in due time come out of the ground in the winged form.

To the foregoing sketch must now be added an account of an American grain-insect, which, in the first edition of this treatise, I suggested would prove to be the same as the Angoumois grain-moth. Having since obtained some of these American insects from various quarters, and having had a colony of them living and increasing, for three years, under my own eye, I find them to agree, in all essential particulars, with the European species. Until, therefore, they are proved, by actual comparison with perfect specimens of the latter, to be absolutely distinct, I must consider it as next to certain that they are identical, and that they have been introduced into this country from Europe. Perhaps, hereafter, the mode of their introduction may be as satisfactorily ascertained as that of the Hessian fly. In the year 1768, Colonel Landon Carter, of Sabine Hall, Virginia, communicated to the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia some interesting

Olivier. Encyclopédie Méthodique. Insectes. Tome IV., p. 115.

"Observations concerning the fly-weevil that destroys wheat." These were printed in the first volume of the "Transactions" of the Society, and were followed by some remarks on the subject by "the Committee of Husbandry." This is the earli est authentic account of the insect that I have met with. The Committee stated that "it was said the injury of wheat from these flies began in North Carolina about forty years before,— and that they had extended gradually from Carolina into Virginia, Maryland, and the lower counties of Delaware, but had not then penetrated into Pennsylvania or passed the Delaware." They remarked, moreover, that the insects "appeared to be of the same kind with those that do the like mischief in Europe, as described to Mr. Duhamel by a gentleman of Angoumois." Mr. Louis A. G. Bosc, who was sent by the French government, in 1796, to this country, where he spent several years, found the Alucila cerealella "so abundant in Carolina as to extinguish a candle when he entered his granary in the night." This fly-weevil, or little grain-moth, has spread from North Carolina and Virginia, where its depredations were first observed, into Kentucky, and the southern parts of Ohio and Indiana, and probably more or less throughout the wheat region of the adjacent States, between the thirty-sixth and fortieth degrees of north latitude. But these are not the extreme limits of its occasional depredations, as it has been found even in New England, where, however, its propagation seems to have been limited by the length and severity of the winter. Wheat, barley, oats, and Indian corn, suffer alike from it, the last especially when kept unprotected more than six or eight months. Several essays on this insect have appeared in agricultural journals, none of which, however, were known to me when my first account of the Angoumois moth was written. One of these is an elaborate article by Edward Ruffin, Esq., of Hanover county, Virginia, printed in "The Farmers' Register" for November, 1833. The object of the writer is to prove, by a series of experiments, that there is a

Encyclopédie Méthodique. Agriculture. Tome V., p. 243. Mr. Bosc, a contributor to this work, resided some time at Wilmington, North Carolina.

continued reproduction of the insect, in stored grain, at short intervals, throughout the warm season, or from the latter part of June till further increase is checked by cold weather. Mr. Ruffin thinks that but very few eggs are deposited on corn in the field, that these do not ordinarily hatch till the following summer, and that then they are sufficient to stock the whole crop of stored grain with their progeny. Mr. Samuel Judah, of Vincennes, Indiana, in a short and very sensible article, published in "The Indiana Farmer and Gardener" for October 4, 1845, seems to have come to nearly the same conclusions. Mr. Richard Owen, of New Harmony, Indiana, has given a very good history of this insect, accompanied with wood-cuts, in "The Cultivator," for July and November, 1846. To this I may have occasion again to refer, as also to two other articles, on the same subject, by Edward Ruffin, Esq., in the sixth volume of "The American Agriculturist," pages 52 and 93, published in February and March, 1847.

In the summer of 1840, Mr. E. C. Herrick, of New Haven, Connecticut, sent to me a few grains of wheat, that had been eaten by moth-worms precisely in the same way as grain is attacked by the Angoumois insect; and a gentleman, to whom this moth-eaten wheat was shown, informed me that he had seen grain thus affected in Maine. Unfortunately, the insects contained in this wheat were dead when received, having perished in the chrysalis state. Had they lived to finish their transformations, they would have afforded me an opportunity of ascertaining their suspected identity with the fly-weevil of Virginia, and the Angoumois moth of France. All my attempts to obtain specimens of the fly-weevil from the South and West were unsuccessful, till the tenth of November, 1845, when I had the pleasure of receiving a parcel of damaged wheat and a bottle full of the moths from Richmond, Virginia, through the kindness of Mr. John Dunlop Osborne, then a student in the Law School of Harvard College. Living specimens, and the insects in the worm or larva state, were still wanting. These were most unexpectedly obtained nearer home. The late Samuel M. Burnside, Esq., of Worcester, told me, in the summer of 1844, that he had a quantity of

corn, grown the year before, which had become infested with insects, and that he found great numbers of the insects, on the wing, in the room where the corn was kept. He also brought to me two large ears of corn from the infected heap. At that time, I was not aware that the fly-weevil attacked Indian corn, at least in New England; and these ears, appearing sound externally, were rolled up in several sheets of strong brown paper, securely tied, and laid away for future examination. They were forgotten, however, till December, 1845, when, upon opening the parcel, I found a great quantity of dead moths, and several living ones, in the paper. Every kernel appeared to have been perforated, and many of the kernels had three or four holes in each of them. Some contained the insect in the worm state, and some the fully formed chrysalis. The moths differed from the Virginia fly-weevil only in being rather larger, with blackish fore legs, and in having a more conspicuous blackish spot near the tips of the feelers, showing them to be merely varieties of the same species. This remark seems to be confirmed by the now well known fact that the fly-weevil, at the South and West, attacks corn as well as wheat, and by the statement of Mr. Owen, that "the insect found in corn does not differ from that found in wheat; it is usually," says he, "somewhat larger than the specimens from wheat, but this may be owing to the greater amount of nourishment which the corn has afforded." Moreover, we learn from the works of Olivier and of Bonafous, that maize also suffers from the Angoumois moth in France. It is related that Kalm, the Swedish traveller, on finding some bugs in pease that he had carried home from this country, was filled with alarm, "fearing lest he might thereby introduce so great an evil into his beloved Sweden." With something of the same feeling, on finding what the insects were that had been depredating in my friend's corn-bin, I put the two ears of corn into a large glass jar, and corked it tight, to prevent the escape of any moths that might be developed from worms and chry

Encyclopédie Méthodique. Insectes. Tome IV., p. 121.- Histoire du Mais, par M. Bonafous, p. 111.