REPORT OF TEE ENTOMOLOGIST AND BOTANIST 173 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 



DIVISION OE' ENTOMOLOGY. 



CEREALS. 



Reports from all parts of the Dominion announce that the grain crop of 1902 has 

 been abundant and of good quality with little injury by the ordinary insect pests. Any 

 injury mentioned is from Aveather. In British Columbia Mr. J. R. Anderson says : 

 ' Weather conditions were good and tlae crops correspondingly so. The yield of wheat 

 in the Okanagan was very large and the quality extra good.' In the North-west 

 Territories Mr. A. W. Peterson described the crop of all kinds of grain as ' enormous 

 beyond precedent and of the finest quality.' Crops of fall wheat seen by me at Pincher 

 Creek and among the Mormon settlements of south-western Alberta can only be described 

 as magnificent, notwithstanding the excessive rains of June and July. In Manitoba 

 ;Mr. McKellar sums up the reports from his correspondents as follows : ' The best crop 

 ever raised in Manitoba ; wheat No. 1 hard or No. 1 Northern. It is hardly possible 

 to describe the perfect weather with which this province was blessed during harvest and 

 threshing. Never in the history of the province was so much work done in the short 

 period of ten weeks, and the garnering of the greatest crop ever grown in the province 

 was done almost without interruption. Of our crop of over 50 millions of bushels of 

 wheat, half was already marketed by the end of November. Threshing was practically 

 finished and more fall ploughing done by the middle of November than was done alto- 

 gether last fall. All grain crops are equally large ; we have upwards of 35 million 

 bushels of plump heavy oats and nearly 12 millions of barley.' Prof. James reports the 

 yield of fall wheat in Ontario as ' above the average for 20 years, and spring wheat, good 

 both in yield and quality.' ' The chief damage to crops everywhere was from rain ; 

 comparatively little injury was done by insect pests, despite the fears entertained of the 

 Hessian Fly.' The same satisfactory reports come from Quebec and the maritime pro- 

 vinces. Fathei Burke, of Prince Edward Island, writes in November last : ' The liarvest 

 is abundant, and, as the loss from insects has been almost nil, the farmer wears his sun- 

 niest smile in the presence of bursting barns and well filled cellars.' 



The only insect enemies of cereal crops requiring mention this year, are the Hessian 

 Fly and locusts, in Manitoba. 



THE HESSIAN FLY 



{Cecidomyia destructor, Say). 



The remarkable and almost entire disappearance of the Hessian Fly from the Avheat 

 fields of Ontario in 1902 after the excessive injury in 1901, is a subject of constant and 

 grateful comment by correspondents. There has been, however, slight injury in Prince 

 Edward Island. A few straws containing puparia were sent in by Mr. E. Wyatt, of 

 Pleasant Grove, P.E.I. , but the loss in the field from which they were taken was hardly 

 perceptible, and no other correspondents make mention of it. In travelling through 

 Prince Edward Island in August last, I could neither hear of nor see any trace of this 

 pest. The most notable attack by the Hessian Fly in 1902 has been in the wheat crop 

 of Manitoba, and several specimens of injured straws were received in September and 

 October. Reports were also received in June of injury to the root shoots of growing 

 wheat at Treesbank, Man. This attack at the root is very seldom noticed by farmers, 



