IIYMENOrXEllA. 439 



States,* that the worms are about one tenth of an inch in 

 length, and of a yellow or straw color; and that, in the month 

 of November, they appeared to have passed to the chrysalis 

 state. They live through the winter unchanged in the straw 

 many of them in the stubble in the field, while others are 

 earned away when the grain is harvested. When the barley 

 IS threshed, numerous small pieces of diseased straw, too hard 

 to be broken by the flail, .y\\[ be found amongthe grain. Some 

 of these may be separated by the winnowing machine, but 

 many others are too large and heavy to be winnowed out, and 

 remain with the grain, from which they can only be removed 

 by the slow process of picking them out by hand. 



In the winter of 1859, Cheever Newhall, Esq., furnished me 

 with a few pieces of diseased barley-straw, each of which 

 contained several small whitish maggots. Since that time 

 this affection of the barley has only once fallen under my no- 

 tice, though I have reason to think that it continues to prevail 

 in many parts of Massachusetts. Each maggot was imbedded 

 m the thickened and solid substance of the stem, in a little 

 longitudinal hollow, of the shape of its own body; and its 

 presence was known by an oblong swelling upon the surface 

 In some pieces of straw the swellings were so numerous as 

 greatly to disfigure the stem, the circulation in which must 

 have been very much checked if not destroyed. Early in the 

 foUowing spring these maggots entered the pupa or chrysalis 

 state, and on the fifteenth of June the perfected insects be<.an 

 to make their escape through minute perforations in the straw 

 which they gnawe<l for this purpose. Seven of these little' 

 holes were counted in a piece of straw only half an inch in 

 length. The insects continued to release themselves from their 

 confinement till the fifth of July, after which no more were 

 seen. I\Iuch to my surprise they proved to be minute, four- 

 winged flics, belonging to the genus Eurytoma, Supposing 

 these insects to be parasites, in accordance with the known 

 habits of others of the same family, I described them as such 

 under the name of Eur 7/tom a Hordei (so called from Hordeum] 



* " New England Farmer," Vol. VIII., p. 138. 



