260 INSECT TRANSFORMATIOiXS. 



of the larva, depositing in it a single egg. She then 

 passed to a second, and proceeded in the same man- 

 ner, depositing a single eg^ in each. Nay, when 

 she examined one which she fomid had already been 

 pricked, she always rejected it and passed to another.* 

 Mr. Shireff repeated these experiments successfully, 

 except that he saw an ichneumon twice prick the 

 same maggot, which " writhed in seeming agony," 

 and " it was again stung- three times by the same 

 fly." He adds, " the earwig also destroys the larvae, 

 three of which I successively presented to an earwig, 

 which devoured them immediately.''^ Mr. Gorrie 

 describes these ichneumons as appearing in myriads 

 on the outside of the ear ; but as impatient of bright 

 light, sheltering themselves from the sun's rays among 

 the husks. 



Our English naturalists were for many years of 

 opinion, that the insect called the Hessian-fly, so 

 destructive to wheat crops in America, belonged to 

 the same family {Muscidce) with the common house- 

 fly ; and Mr. Markwick, an intelligent naturalist, by 

 a series of observations on a British fly {Chlorops 

 pumilionisy Meigen) which attacks the stems of 

 wheat, created no little alarm among agriculturists. 

 Markwick's fly is less than a fourth of an inch in 

 length, with dark shoulders striped with two yellow 

 lines, and the maggot is white. He planted roots of 

 wheat containing larvae in a small tlower-pot, and 

 covered them with gauze. Each stem produced one 

 of the above flies. The crop of wheat attacked by 

 this maggot, though at first it appeared to fail, turned 

 out well in consequence of numerous side shoots. It 

 is only the early wheat sown in October that is aff"ected 

 by It: 



* Linn, Trans, ut supra. f Loudon's Ma<^. nt supra. 

 \ Mag. Nat. Hist., July 1829, p. 292. 



