This appears to be an age of insect pests. We
are assured that the Hessian fly has now made a firm lodgment in our wheat and barley, and that the most we can hope is to keep it clown by carefully destroying the dabble of infested wheat and barley. Mr. C. W. Gray, writing from the House of Commons, saysthat the Hessian fly is now in the pupa or chrysalis state, "and may be easily found: in an affected barley or wheat field by examining straws which are bent down from a wound just-above the second or third joint, the email reddish-brown chrysalis, very similar to a grain of linseed, being lodged in the straw at the wounded part. In some fields I have found half-a-doten or more straws containing the pupas on a acrare yard of ground. There is, I fear, no way of stamping the peat out by compulsory means with compensation, as it would be practically impossible to destroy all the infested straw in England, but something may be done to keep it under by cleaning and burning the stabbice, if weather permits, direotly after harvest, and, as it is probable that the rubbish and siftings from threshing and dressing machines will contain quantities of the pure, all refuse of this sort should be burnt." Germany is also suffering from the Colorado beetle, which has appeared in Saxony, in the neighbour- hood of Dommitsoh. The German Government is issuing the most serious warnings on that subject. It would seem that insects are more damaging just now than larger foes, and all the more formidable because they are so minute. Something of the same kind is true also of the political world,
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