90 PRIZE ESSAY : 



These dead flies may frequently be found thus suspended by their 

 tail -like ovipositors, to the outer scale of the chaff." (D 



152. About a week suffices to hatch the young maggots, and 

 three weeks enables them to attain maturity. They feed upon 

 the juices of the grain, and, as it were, dry it up. "When full 

 grown the maggots wriggle in damp weather, or when the stalk 

 is wet with dew or rain, down to the ground, and penetrate about 

 half an inch or an inch below the surface. Here they remain 

 until the following spring, still retaining their maggot state. In 

 the month of May they assume the pupa condition, and preserve 

 it for two or three weeks, when they wriggle themselves to the 

 surface of the ground, break their pupa skin, and assume the 

 form of the midge. 



Kernel of Wheat, the chaff pulled down A mature Maggot— highly magnified, 



to show the Maggots in their usual 

 situation.] 



153. It frequently happens that the maggots are gathered 

 with the grain and carried into the barn, but instead of remain- 

 ing soft and pliant, they become stiff and inactive, and their 

 bodies losing a portion of their moisture by evaporation, con- 

 tract and separate from the thin outer skin, which forms a case 

 in which the little yellow worm is enclosed. It thus reposes in 

 the wheat heads until the grain is threshed and winnowed, when 

 most of these larvae are collected with other screenings, and often 

 emptied out among the litter of the barn-yard. Here their 

 bodies imbibe moisture, and swell until they fill the case or skins 

 in which they are enclosed, and the worms crawl or wriggle away 



(1) Asa ritch, M.D. Rural New Torker, 1856. 



