Februan^ '16] GOSSARD: COUNTY HESSIAN FLY WORK 143 



sometimes accept the testimony of a fellow farmer more xjuickly than 

 he will that of a professional entomologist or of a county agent. Mul- 

 tiple copies of all these letters were made and put in the hands of the 

 county agent, and were given to some of the committeemen. Part of 

 these were published in the local newspapers and the county agent 

 published reports in the county papers of all pubhc meetings. 



However, the clinching factor, which rendered all this publicity work 

 effective and influenced all the farmers of the county to fall into line 

 without any organized sohcitation, outside of Elizabeth township, was 

 the installation of a breeding cage and the keeping of an egg-laying 

 record at the County Experiment Farm. Had the farmers thought we 

 were merely guessing at the date when the flies had gone, some of them 

 would doubtless have concluded that they could do just as good a job 

 at that, as an entomologist one hundred miles or more away; but when 

 they reaUzed that we had a definite method for determining when the 

 brood was past m their own county, under the conditions of 1015, all 

 were willing to wait for any reasonable length of time to learn our 

 results; in fact, they were afraid to disregard them. 



The breeding cage was simply a wooden box two or three feet long, 

 about two feet wide and perhaps sixteen or eighteen inches high, 

 without any bottom and a small hole in the middle of the top, over 

 which a lantern globe was placed and covered with cheesecloth. 

 Stubble and top soil, containing puparia in abundance, was collected 

 from a plot badly infested the preceding season, dampened, and put 

 into the cage September 14, This, I attended to personally, and the 

 next morning gave to the county agent, Mr. Eastwood, who had 

 succeeded Mr. Thomas, instructions for making the count and dif- 

 ferentiating the fly with a magnifying glass from the other flies ap- 

 pearing in the cage. A daily record of the hatch was thenceforward 

 kept. He was also taught to recognize the eggs on the wheat blades, 

 and a few days later he marked 100 wheat plants, located at intervals 

 down a suitable drill row, by putting hog-nose rings about them. All 

 eggs were removed from the blades of these plants by rubbing them off 

 with the finger, and the next day and each succeeding day, thereafter, 

 the eggs were counted and then removed. The egg-laying record will 

 show a maximum rate of egg-laying in the^field a few days after the 

 maximum emergence of flies in the cage. When both records show 

 that the crest of the brood is well passed, and weather conditions for 

 the season have been normal, or without a marked deficiency of mois- 

 ture, it is usually best to recommend seeding, since the wheat will not 

 be up and inviting to the flies for ten days or two weeks after it is sown, 

 and by that time practically all of the flies will have disappeared. 



