120 



PEAR. 



PEAR. 



Pear Gnat Midge. Diplosis pyricora, Kiley; Cecidomyia nigra ! , 

 Meigen and Sclimidberger ; C. pyricoJa?, Nordlinger. 



DiPLOsis PYKivoRA. — Female, magnified ; lines showing nat. size. Larva and 

 pupa, magnified. Abortive Pear. Gnat and pupa, after Prof. Pkiley. 



The Pear Gnat Midge is a very frequent trouble to Pear 

 growers from the damage caused by its httle legless, yellowish 

 white maggots living in numbers inside the young Pears in 

 their very early condition. Consequently on the maggots 

 feeding within, the growth of the young Pears is checked and 

 stunted, the centre decays, and the fruit cracks or dies, and 

 drops off. 



This attack was first reported to me in 1883, with good 

 specimens of Pears having their growth aborted by the infesta- 

 tion sent accompanying, some of which I was favoured with 

 on June 15th by Lord Walsingham from one of his farms in 

 Norfolk. These consisted of small abortive Pears, then in 

 process of being eaten away by the small white legless 

 maggots within, and information was sent with these samples 

 of attack that every Pear on the trees from which they were 

 taken was infested by them. 



Amongst various characteristics of these larvse, the faculty 

 of skipping (like cheese-maggots) in every direction — a power 

 which they make use of in springing from the Pears on which 

 they have fed to the ground — was very noticeable. 



A little earlier in the same year (on June 4th) an account 

 of a similar attack (also mentioned as not previously observed) 

 was sent me, with specimens accompanying, from Llanina, 

 New Quay, South Wales, by Mr. C. K. Longcroft, with the 

 observations: — "I have sent you some specimens of Marie 

 Louise Pears, of which there was a splendid promise of a crop 



