TENTH REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST 399 



maternal cares and duties within their subterranean abodes, wings 

 would no longer be needed and could only prove an incumbrance to 

 them. 



Phora agarici nov. sp. 



The Mushroom Phora. 



(Ord. Dipteka: Fam. Phobid^.) 



The successful cultivation of mushrooms during the warmer portion 

 of the year — in May and thereafter through the summer months — 

 even under the approved methods now quite generally adopted, is 

 regarded as impracticable, owing to the attack and destruction of the 

 plants by the larvoe of small flies that tunnel the stalk and burrow in 

 every direction through the pileus.* This difficulty has long been 

 experienced by mushroom-growers, but no means have been discovered 

 by which it may be surmounted. Many efforts have been made in 

 different directions, but from the peculiar character of the mushroom 

 and its extreme susceptibility to injury from all of the insecticidal 

 preparations that have been experimented with, nothing satisfactory 

 has been accomplished, and further efforts seem hopeless. 



In a preceding page, several species of " fungus gnats " {Mycetophi- 

 lidoi) are named, which feed on mushrooms, but it is not believed that 

 in this country, at least, any of those are chargeable with the annual 

 arrest of mushroom culture in the month of April in this latitude, nor 

 is it known that they are among those which infest, to a greater or less 

 extent, Agaridcs campestris and many other wild forms during the 

 summer months. 



A Serious Tffushrooni Pest. 



My attention at different times during preceding years has been called 

 by Mr. William Falconer to the mushroom pest now being considered, 

 as something quite different from the "manure fly," and which, in our 

 correspondence, he has designated as " the maggot." Mr. Falconer 

 informs me that it has been the common warm- weather pest of the 

 mushroom-grower ever since mushrooms were first cultivated, but in 

 all the literature of practical horticulture — our own and that of 

 Europe — he has never been able to find any indication of its identity. 



* It is stated in works on gardening that in deep, dark cellars, mushrooms are not affected in 

 this manner, and that they can be grown throughout the summer with perfect immunity from 

 insect attack. But this is not so. I never saw or knew of an artificially constructed mushroom 

 cellar that was proof against "maggots." In caves away in the bowels of the earth and com- 

 pletely away from natural light, the immunity m»y possibly be perfect, but of this I know 

 nothing through my own observation or experience. (Wm. Falconer.) 



