products, in some shape or other, of our fields, and the industry of our citizens. It is stated that, within a year, there has been an increase of our exports to China of 1,500,000 yards of cotton shirting; and that, in the last four years, there have been sent to the Chinese market 100,000,000 yards of plain cottons. It is true that by far the larger portion of this is from Great Britain; but we are gaining from year to year.

The following are given as specimens of some of the exports to foreign countries. Others might be added:

"Cargo of the packet ship Samuel Hicks, for Liverpool.-562 bales cotton, 1,650 barrels turpentine, 2,053 barrels flour, 250 barrels lard, 200 barrels flaxseed cakes, 27 barrels bread and corn meal, 2 cases veneers, 460 bushels Indian corn, 285 bundles (45 tons) hay."

"Cargo of ship Toronto, for London.-25 bales American hemp, 500 barrels turpentine, 250 tons linseed cake, 65 packages manufactured tobacco, 250 tierces beef, 10,000 gallons sperm oil, 8,000 pounds spermaceti, 20 tons tallow, 130 hogsheads tobacco strips, 15 packages furs and skins."

Cargo of vegetables, &c.-A vessel cleared at Boston, last week, for Demarara, with the following cargo: 150 barrels apples, 16 kegs butter, 10 barrels carrots, 3,000 cabbages, 200 celery roots, 15 boxes cheese, 6 half barrels cranberries, 50 barrels green corn, 10 half barrels eggs, 4,000 fresh fish, 75 live hogs, 200 lobsters, 50 barrels onions, 100 boxes oysters, 50 barrels potatoes, 75 live sheep, 50 half barrels turnips, 10 boxes poultry, 15 boxes peaches and pears, and 150 tons of ice."

"Exports to Europe. The packet ship Mediator, from New York, for London, takes out 358 tierces of beef, 288 of clover, 200 casks of ashes, and 112 of cheese. The Cambridge, for Liverpool, takes 525 firkins of butter, 300 tierces of flaxseed, 40 of beef, 100 boxes cheese, and 50 hogsheads of tallow."

Looking, then, both at home and abroad, embracing with enlarged views the state of our agricultural supplies, and the hopes we may reasonably cherish, we still feel that there is no ground for discouragement. Prices may be comparatively low; but a starving people are not lifting up an imploring cry for the very necessaries of life. Some of our products may be diminished; but still we have enough, the country through, and to spare, for those whose hands and hearts open to receive our interchange of commodities. The East and the West are drawing into closer proximity; vast chains of railroads and canals are, as it were, planting a depot or fixing a port of entry nearer to every man's door; while there are breaking out, like the pent-up fires of the internal earth, and heaving into sight, alike with new elements to be wrought, the kindling forge, the smoke and din of factories, where industry, toil, and enterprise, of one kind and another, greet the farmer as he bears to them the fruits of his healthful and useful occupation, to feed the multitudes which crowd into those cities of invention and machinery. Amid all the inequalities which must always more or less abound in climate, soil, and kindred elements, there is still an onward impulse, and the restless spirit of enterprise cannot stop. Year after year must add to the development of our resources; and if, perchance, there may or must be a change in the direction of labor, yet labor cannot always be profitless. The evils of overcharged production, a better judgment will rectify; and if we are true to ourselves, we need fear no foreign competition; nor that markets will not gradually be found, which will echo back, in calls for aid, their response to our inquiry if they can receive the extending surplus of the products of our national industry.

APPENDIX.

No. 1.

Observations communicated at the request of the Hon. H. L. Ellsworth, by E. C. Herrick, librarian of Yale College, Conn.

THE HESSIAN FLY.

The insect commonly called the Hessian fly, which has for so many years ravaged the wheat fields of our country, appears to have been wholly unknown here before the American Revolution. It is usually stated that the insect was first noticed in the year 1776 or 1779, on Staten Island and the westerly end of Long Island, and was generally supposed to have been introduced among straw brought hither by the Hessian troops in the service of Great Britain. The ravages of the insect soon attracted general attention; and as early as the year 1788, serious apprehensions were excited in England that the destroyer might be conveyed thither in some cargo of wheat. The alarm there was so great, that the Government took up the matter; "the Privy Council sat day after day, anxiously debating what measures should be adopted to ward off the danger of a calamity more to be dreaded, as they well knew, than the plague or pestilence; expresses were sent off in all directions to the officers of the customs at the outports, respecting the examination of cargoes; despatches written to the ambassadors in France, Austria, Prussia, and America, to gain that information, of the want of which they were now so sensible; and so important was the business deemed, that the minutes of the council, and the documents collated from, fill upwards of 200 octavo pages." (Kirby and Spence, i, 50.) On the 25th of June of that year, an order in council was issued, prohibiting the entrance into Great Britain of wheat raised in any of the territories of the United States; intending, by this measure, to keep out the much-dreaded enemy. Soon after the arrival of the news of this order, the supreme executive council of Pennsylvania addressed a letter of inquiry to the "Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture," who promptly replied that the plant of the wheat alone was injured, and that the insect was not propagated by sowing the grain which grew on fields infected with it. The prohibition was doubtless based on the erroneous representation of Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Blagden, which they continued to enforce, even after they were better instructed by Dr. Currie. It is sufficiently remarkable, that, although the wheat was prohibited an "entry," it was allowed to be stored; so that the Hessian fly, if concealed among the grain, would, after all, have had a good opportunity to escape into the country. In eight or ten months, the Government bought the imprisoned wheat at prime cost, kiln-dried it, and resold it at great loss, and almost immediately took off the prohibition. (Memoir of Currie, ii, 65.)

In the course of a few years after this, the Hessian fly was found in every part of our country where wheat was cultivated. From the period of the Revolution down to the present time, no insect in the land has re

ceived so much public attention, or has called out so many scores of pages of observation and speculation. These are to be found scattered through magazines, agricultural journals, and common newspapers. But, in defiance of them all, the Hessian fly continues its destructive work, and is probably as little under the actual control of man as it was half a century

ago.

Whether this insect was an original inhabitant of this country, or was imported by the Hessian soldiers, is a question not yet settled. At the time of the discussion which led to the prohibitory order, an extensive inquiry in Europe resulted in the conclusion that the insect was wholly unknown there. Yet, in the year 1834, it was found existing in several places in southern Europe, and injuring the wheat in the same manner as in this country. This important discovery was made by my friend, Mr. James D. Dana, who had previously been engaged with me in the examination of the Hessian fly, and was well qualified to decide upon the case. (American Journal of Sciences, xli, 153.) Moreover, we have an account from the vicinity of Geneva, in Switzerland, reported by Duhamel, of an insect destroying the wheat there as long since as 1732, in the manner of the Hessian fly; and an account, in 1823, by Raddi, of what is probably the same insect, in various places in Italy. No traces have been detected of any insect of the habits of the Hessian fly, in our country, earlier than the year 1776; and if this insect is a native of North America, what plant sustained it before wheat, rye, and barley, were imported? On the other hand, we have no proof that the Hessian fly has ever been found in Germany; and it is certain that, if the wheat were reaped in the ordinary manner, nearly all the available insects would be left in the stubble; and, further, the straw alleged to have been brought by the Hessians must have been that which ripened in the summer of 1775, and from which most of the insects which it contained would have escaped before August, 1776. On a question of such uncertainty, no one need quarrel with another's opinion.

The first scientific description of the Hessian fly was published in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, for July, 1817, (No. 3, i, 45,) by the late distinguished entomologist, Thomas Say. He there gives it the systematic name of the cecidomyia destructor; and to his description adds a few remarks relative to its habits, and furnishes, also, an account of another insect, by which the fly is often destroyed. Without going into a minute and tedious technical description, the following account is offered, as probably sufficient to enable an observer to identify the insect in its various transformations: The Hessian fly is a twowinged insect, with head, eyes, and thorax, black; the head is small and depressed; the palpi (or mouth feelers) are three or four jointed-the basal one being the smallest; the antennæ are about half as long as the body, and consist each of from 14 to 17 oval joints, besides the basal joint, which appears double; the wings are large, hairy, rounded at the tip, and have each two or three longitudinal nervures; the abdomen is of a tawny red, and furnished, irregularly, with many black hairs; consists of seven rings or segments, besides the ovipositor, which is of two sides, and of a rose-red color; the ovipositor, when extended to the utmost, is about onethird as long as the abdomen; length of body, from the front of the head to the end of the abdomen, about one-eighth of an inch; the legs are

long and slender, pale red, and covered sparsely with dark hair. The male is equal in size to the female, but generally less black, with antennæ somewhat longer, and about three-fourths the length of the body. The joints of the antennæ are globular, and slightly separated from each other. Several other species of the genus cecidomyia, or one closely allied to it, are common in this region. But the Hessian fly is the largest and darkest of our species with which I am acquainted.

The eggs are laid in the long creases or furrows of the upper surface of the leaves (i. e. the blade or strap-shaped part) of the young wheat plant. While depositing her eggs, the insect stands with her head towards the point or extremity of the leaf, and at various distances between the point and where the leaf joins and surrounds the stalk. The number found on a single leaf varies from a single egg up to thirty, or even more. The egg is about a fiftieth of an inch long, cylindrical, rounded at the ends, glossy and translucent, of a pale-red color, becoming, in a few hours, irregularly spotted with deeper red. Between its exclusion and its hatching, these red spots are continually changing in number, size, and position; and sometimes nearly all disappear. A little while before hatching, two lateral rows of opaque white spots, about ten in number, can be seen in each egg. In four days, more or less, according to the weather, the egg is hatched; the little wrinkled maggot, or larva, creeps out of the delicate membranous egg skin, crawls down the leaf, enters the sheath, and proceeds along the stalk, usually as far as the next joint below. Here it fastens, lengthwise, and head downwards, to the tender stalk, and lives upon the sap. It does not gnaw the stalk, nor does it enter the central cavity thereof; but, as the larva increases in size, it gradually becomes imbedded in the substance of the stalk. After taking its station, the larva moves no more, gradually loses its reddish color and wrinkled appearance, becomes plump and torpid, is at first semi-translucent, and then more and more clouded with internal white spots; and, when near maturity, the middle of the intestinal parts is of a greenish color. In five or six weeks (varying with the season) the larva begins to turn brown, and soon becomes of a bright chestnut color. In this state, the insect bears some resemblance to a flax seed; and many observers speak of this as the flax-seed state. The larva has now become a chrysalis, or pupa, and takes no more food. The pupa within gradually cleaves off from the outer skin, and, in the course of two or three weeks, is entirely detached from it, so that the skin of the larva (now brown and hardened, and of a sort of leathery texture) has become a case or shell for the pupa inside. The pupa shell is, of course, in size and form, like the larva: it is oval, bulging out beneath, and of the same curve above as the outside of the stalk; divided by cross lines into twelve segments, and is about an eighth of an inch long. Within this shell the pupa gradually advances towards the winged state; it contracts in length, but not in breadth; and its skin appears covered with minute elevations. Just before evolution, we find the pupa invested in a delicate membrane, or scarf, (which, not long previous, was its outer skin,) through which many parts of the future fly may be distinctly seen. Finally, this scarf splits along the thorax, or back, and the insect comes forth, both from this and the pupa shell, a perfect two-winged fly.

This is, in brief, the history of an individual which has been so fortunate as to escape all the numerous enemies with which its race is sur

yumis peak, he moment the egg is deposited; but of these, more here

1- me Sortern and Middle States, at least, winter wheat is sown in Serander de Ceber. Soon after the plants have appeared above ground, e resad by begins to lay her eggs upon them; and this operation is Wantingat during several weeks, according to the season. The eggs laid a ne gre leaves are in a few days hatched, and the young larvæ ew, đề an the stalk, and take their stations; generally clustering around che su at the nearest joint below. Here, by sucking of the plant, they ar in size, become full and hard, and, pressing deeply into the stalk, The air its growth; and if their number about one joint is large, the s&as &illed. Frequently the plant, although impoverished, advances far erough so head out; but when the grain begins to fill, its own weight, or pedaps the wind, causes the stalk to break down. The injury done to e wheat is occasioned by the exhaustion of the sap, and by the pressure en the yielding stalk.

In five or six weeks the larva stop feeding, the outer skin turns brown, and within this brown and leathery case the pupa pass the winter-generally a little below the surface of the earth. In April and May the fly is again found depositing her eggs on the same wheat, (viz : that from grain sown the preceding autumn,) and also on the spring wheat which has just come up. These eggs hatch, and the larvæ therefrom operate in the same manner as those of the autumn previous. These larvæ become pupæ about the middle of June. The flies which lay their eggs in the spring are probably in part from the pupa which became such late in the preceding autumn, and partly from pupa contained in stubble left the preeeding summer. The period of the existence of the Hessian fly in the pupa or flax seed state is exceedingly variable. After much observation, my own opinion is, that, in general, pupa which become such late in the autumn evolve the winged insect partly during the next spring, and partly in the summer and autumn following. Those pupa which become Such about June evolve the winged insect partly during the next autumn and partly during the year succeeding.

The Hessian fly is attacked by numerous foes, which, in various stages of its existence, destroy a large part of every generation. Whether it has, in its winged state, any enemies, except the ordinary destroyers of thes, I know not. The eggs, while lying on the leaves of the young plant, are visited by a very minute four-winged insect, (a species of platygaster,) which lays in them its own eggs. From later observation, it appears that, occasionally, as many as five or six eggs of this parasite are laid in a single egg of the Hessian fly. The latter egg hatches and becomes a pupa, as usual; but from the pupa case, instead of the Hessian fly, issues one or more of these minute parasites.

The pupa, while imbedded in the stalk, are attacked by at least three different minute parasites, (four-winged hymenoptera,) which, boring through the sheath of the stalk, deposite their eggs in the body within; and the latter is finally devoured by the parasite larvæ. These are the principal means by which the multiplication of the Hessian fly is restrained within tolerable limits.

Although the loss annually sustained by the wheat growers of this country, in consequence of the ravages of the Hessian fly, is severe, yet It is well nigh impossible to ascertain even its probable amount. As long