Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/819

Rh  1em  HESSE-HOMBURG, a former landgraviate of Germany, consisted of two parts, the province of Homburg-vor-der- Hohe, on the right bank of the Rhine, and the lordship of Meisenheim (added in 1815), on the left bank, to the north of Frankfort-on-the-Main. It comprehended an area of 106 square miles; and its in 1864 was 27,374. Homburg now forms part of the Prussian government district of Wiesbaden, and Meisenheim of the government district of Coblentz.

1em  HESSIAN FLY, a name originally given in the United States in 1776 during the War of Independence to a small fly very destructive to wheat, supposed to have been brought over in straw by the Hessian troops employed on the British sile. It is a species of Cectdomyia, described under the nime C. destructor by the American entomologist Siy, and belonging to the Dipterous family Cecidumyiide, the num2rous members of which produce galls, distortions, and other injuries in the plants they attack. It was often thought that this insect occurred in England; but the indigenous English wheat-midge, also very destructive, is an allied species, Diplosis tritic. A species found in Hungiry and Germany, where it has committed great dimige, has been supposed to be the true Hessian fly, which has also been recordel from Minorca and Naples; Cohn notices its ravages in Silesia, and Kiinstler in Austria ; and Kaltenbach (who identifies C. secalina, Loew, with it) siys it is more or less common in Germany, and that it originally cam2 from Europe. Nevertheless, many good authorities have considered that the destructive European fly is not identical with the North American insect, though closely allied to it, and of similar habits. In the United States this minute midge has been a dreadful scourge at times, even to the extent of causing local famine. The femile lays 20 or 30 eggs in a crease of the leaf of the young plant, and the larvee when hatched work their way between the leaf and the stalk, till they come to a joint, a little below the surface, where they remain, head down, suck- ing the sap, and turn to pupz enclosed in a covering; this is known as the “ flax-seed” condition. The injury occasioned is not detected until the plant grows higher. There are two broods every year, one reaching the fly state in May, the other in August or carly in September; as the fly only lives a few weeks, wheat that is sown so late as nut to come up until the second brood has disappeared escapes harm. ‘The usual result of the attack is that small aborted ears only are formed, the few grains of which shrivel and will scarcely ripen, the straw also being of inferior quality. The perfect insect is smaller than the common gnat, which it sumewhat resembles, and from which its size and more simple antennze distinguish it. The larve are spindle- shaped and reddish-white, with the intestinal canal show- ing through the skin when tull grown; they are about one-seventh of an inch long, and are provided with small hooks near the head ; at this stage they group themselves in regular rings round the stem attacked. A very minute natural parasite, Semzvtellus destructor, belonging to the division Pteromalides of the Hymenopterous family Chalci- dide is, luckily for agriculturists, usually so plentiful as to be able to keep down the fly, on the larva and pupz of which its own larve feed.

1em  HESSUS, (–), a distinguished German humanist of the, was born January 6,, at Bockendorf near Frankenberg in Hesse. His family name is not known: the baptismal name Eoban he owed to a local saint ; Hessus merely indi- cates the land of his origin ; while the prenomen Helius was assumed by himself partly with reference to the sun-god, patron of poets, and partly also, it is said, with reference to the fact that he had been Lorn ona Sunday. His early education was received in the monastery of Haina, where his father held a menial position, and afterwards at Frankenberg ; in he entered the university of Erfurt, where in  Crotus Rubianus and Ulrich von Hutten became his fellow-students and his firm friends. Though devoting himself enthusiastically to the composition of Latin verse, in which he soon became an acknowledged master, he was far from neglecting the other studies of the place, and shortly after his graduation he held fora short time the post of rector of the St Severus school. Compelled by disturbances to leave Erfurt in, he for five years led a somewhat wandering life, in the course of which he passed sume time in Leipsic as a student of law; in he returned to his former post at Erfurt, and in  became professor of belles-lettres. He was now pro- minently associated with Reuchlin, Peutinger, Mutianus, as well as with Crotus Rubianus and Hutten; and from the first he fully identified himself with the cause of Luther and the Reformation, In he went as teacher of rhetoric and poetry to Nuremberg, but in  returned to Erfurt, whence in  he was called to the chair of poetry and history in Marburg. There he died October 5,.

