35 



The Two-winged Flies 



than two weeks. Thus even in the short season of the fruit ripening and 

 gathering much injury can be and often is done by these little tipplers. 



A much larger group of fruit-flies is the Trypetidae, whose larvae burrow 

 in fruits or plant-stems, often producing galls on these latter. The familiar 

 spherical swelling or gall on goldenrod stems is the hiding and feeding place 



Fig. 499. Puparia of cherry-fruit fly, Rhagoletls cingulata. (After Slingerland; natural 



size and much enlarged.) 



of the thick white larvae of Trypeta solidaginis, a pretty fly with banded 

 wings. The longer hollow gall which sometimes occurs on goldenrod 

 is made by the caterpillar of a small moth, Gelechia gallce-solidaginis. 

 Some Trypetid species do much injury by burrowing into fruit, as the apple- 

 maggot, and the larva of a black-and-white fly with 

 banded wings known as Trypeta ludens, whose 

 larvae infests Mexican oranges and may sometime 

 get a foothold in California or Florida. 



Another group of small flies whose larvae are 

 responsible for serious injury to growing grain, 

 meadows, and pasture grasses are the Oscinidae, 

 or grass-stem flies. The adults are commonly taken 

 by collectors when beating or sweeping in meadows 

 FIG. 500. An aquatic and pastures. The flies are minute but plump, 

 muscid, Sepedon fusd- and are var j ous i y colored, sometimes blackish, 

 penms, larva, pupa, and . . J 



adult. (After Needham; sometimes yellowish. They are so small that they 



two and one-half times often get into one's eyes in their swarming-time, 

 and are said to cause a prevalent disease of the 



eyes in the South. The thick cylindrical little larvae of several species of 

 Oscinis live in the stems of wheat, barley, oats, rye, and grass. The larva 

 of Chlorops similis burrows in the leaves of sugar-beets, and another 



