The Cabbage Root Maggot. 497 



habits and life-history is very indefinite and meagre. The writer 

 has never seen the insect in any stage, so cannot hope to add any- 

 thing new to what has already been recorded. But this Root 

 Maggot has often been confounded with the Cabbage Root Mag- 

 got, as our synonomy of the latter insect shows. And as this 

 confusion of these species has cost us no little trouble, we desire 

 to here record what we have been able to learn about it from very 

 scattered sources, with the hope that it may help to clear the way 

 for others; and especially that it may induce some observer, 

 opportunely situated, to give us more definite knowlege regarding 

 this Root Maggot. 



It is an European species, and has been discussed by several 

 German and English writers. However, there seems to be no 

 record of any extensive damage to crops directly and definitely 

 traceable to it. True, Curtis discussed it as a turnip pest in Eng- 

 land in 1843, but we now know that his turnip maggot was not the 

 Root Maggot, but undoubtedly the Cabbage Root Maggot,* 



The only reason for believing that this Root Maggot occurs in 



this country is the fact that in 1878 one of the flies was found by 



Mr. Meade in a collection of flies sent him from the Cambridge 



Museum in Massachusetts. No other specimens are at present 



known to exist in this country, and no injury has as yet been 



traceable to the species here. 



All accounts of the maggot of this insect are compilations of Bouche's de- 

 scription (in 1834) of a maggot which he said occurred by the thousands in 

 human dung. He describes a maggot very different from the Cabbage Root 

 Maggot ; his Dung Maggot is said to be muricated with black all over, even 

 the fleshy tubeicleson the caudal segment, and other differences appear in 

 his description. If Bouche's description of this Root Maggot is correct, and 



* Mr. Meade writes me that Curtis' illustration of the adult of his turnip 

 maggot (which he called Anthoniyia radicutn Linn.) is a good figure of the 

 cabbage fly. This figure has appeared many times in European and Amer- 

 ican literature as that oiradicum. Curtis' account of these Anthomyians in 

 his " Farm Insects" has been the mine from which many writers on the 

 subject have drawn their information, yet Dr. Fitch seems to have been the 

 only one who has heretofore doubted Curtis' determinations of the species. 

 One or two other inaccuracies which crept into Curtis' account are pointed 

 out for the first time later on in this bulletin ; they have been handed down 

 through the literature and now appear in several of the best discussions of 

 the Cabbage Root Maggot in our American literature. 



