. . . under a severe visitation of Gnats after but a few days experience, it is generally conceded, even by old settlers, this is going to be one of the best seasons for them ever known in this favored meridian. As we have yet had but a single week and in the course of human events five more still remain to us, of the great gnat season, we recommend the cultivation of an amiable even temper and quite deportment with a free use of fans, pocket handkerchiefs, boughs of trees, &c. The gnats, it may be well to remark, for the benefit of the uninformed, were introduced into Iowa at an early period by the buffalos – hence the name buffalo gnats. When the buffalos departed for the far west, they left the graves of their fathers and the gnats to remind us that they had been here before and fixed up some of our domestic institutions.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 24, 1862, p. 2
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