"The Hessian Fly is causing great alarm amongst the
agriculturists. Its extinction is attracting the attention of
the Faculty."--_Daily Paper._
[Illustration: Catching Perch with a Fly.]
Now we number the Potato
Beetle 'mong the scares gone by;
But a cuss has found its way to
Fields of corn--the Hessian Fly.
_Unde derivatur_ "Hessian"?
Named from whence the fly had flown,
Under quite a wrong impression,
No such thing in Hesse's known.
_Cecidomyia destructor_,
(What long names have little things!)
Comes o'er Ocean by conductor;
Straw, pestiferous, _pupae_, brings.
They turn, each, into a small gnat,
Not a blow-fly, bottle-blue;
_Cecidomyia_, _vulgo_, gall-gnat,
Galls both growths and growers too.
So the Farmers, full of trouble,
Help imploring go about,
They are told to burn the stubble;
No way else to stamp it out.
True the _Chalcis_ is reputed,
On the Gall-gnat's grub to feed;
But, for service to be suited,
How that parasite can they breed?
Yet there is a vermin-killer,
Like to thin the dipterous pest,
To the farmer and the miller,
Which instruction may suggest.
What may be, the question narrows,
If they doubt they can but try,
Is, if let alone, the sparrows
Might keep down the Hessian Fly.
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BLESS HIS 'ART.--If there is anything in a name, the recently
suggested appointment of _Artin Effendi_ as Turkish Commissioner
at Sofia ought to mean something. Certainly the situation is one
demanding the exercise of no little diplomatic art. But the question
is, whether the proposed Commissioner has got, as ROBERT would put it,
his _art in_ the business. There's the point.
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A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH.--The Riots at Ostend.
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