ANNUAL MEETING AT LEXINGTON. 313 



PICKLED FRUIT FLY. 



In concluding" these notes I must refer to an insect that is becom- 

 ing year by year an increasing nuisance, especially to housekeepers. 

 This is a small two-winged fly or gnat, popularly termed the pickled 

 fruit fly, pomace-fly or ferment-fly, and scientifically described under 

 the name of Drosophila annyelophila, Lowe. This insect first attracted 

 my attention four or five years ago, hovering over baskets of gathered 

 fruit and infesting jars of pickles and jam that had not been hermetic- 

 ally sealed. Every succeeding year it has become more numerous and 

 destructive and during the past summer and autumn was an almost in- 

 sufferable pest. The fly is one-eighth of an inch in length, of a dull 

 yellow color, faintly banded at the posterior end with black. The head 

 is short and broad with prominent eyes. Thorax large and rounded, 

 and, like the entire body, clothed with fine, often-branching hairs. The 

 broad wings are beautifully irridescent, intersected by a few strong- 

 black veins and delicately fringed with hairs. 



These flies are attracted to all fruits on which the epidermis is not 

 absolutely intact, and especially to cooked vegetables, preserves and 

 expressed fruit juices. The eggs, which they deposit on these sub- 

 stances, hatch almost immediately and in a very few days the food will 

 be swarming with small, somewhat spindle-shaped, whitish maggots. 

 The latter when full grown are about one-fourth of an inch in length, 

 scantily clothed with short hairs and have at each end several minute 

 tubercles. They retiuire but four or five days for development and at 

 the end of that time, stationing themselves in some permanent situa- 

 tion, they gradually shrink and harden into pale-brown puparia^ with 

 tuberculated heads and tails, from which, in a few days, the flies 

 emerge by ruptures in the upper ends. 



This insect does not, so far as I have been able to discover, ever 

 attack perfectly sound, growing or pickled fruit. But the slightest 

 puncture, like the peck of a bird, or a cut made by a wasp or other in- 

 sect affords it an entrance and the larvre soon reduce the fruit to a 

 mass of decay. In this way the work of the codling moth and curculio 

 is rendered doubly destructive. • 



It has been reported as a v^y pernicious pest in vinyards, and 

 many grape growers contend that the larva^- make their way into sound 

 fruit, but this is doubtful. It is probable, however, that they do, indi- 

 rectly, destroy many perfect berries, by spreading to them the fer- 

 menting juices of those which are infested and producing the condi- 

 tions favorable for their entrance and development. 



