126 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



' Report of Observations of Injurious Insects ' for 1884, which, 

 so far as I know,* is the first recorded notice of the insect in this 

 country. I shall take the liberty of quoting one or two passages 

 from her paper, as they are of peculiar interest. Miss Ormerod 

 says : — " On June 15th I was favoured by Lord Walsingham with 

 specimens illustrative of injury to young pears, caused by the 

 maggots of a kind of small fly or gnat-midge." The small 

 abortive pears were gathered on one of Lord Walsingham's farms 

 in Norfolk. " The inside of these pears was then in process of 

 being eaten away by the small white legless maggots within, and 

 information was sent accompanying that every pear on the trees 

 from which the samples of injury were taken was infested by 

 them." There is no mention of which kind or sort these pears 

 were, but the next extract which I shall make will give some 

 interesting information upon this point. Miss Ormerod goes on 

 to say : — " A little earlier in the year (on June 4th) an account of 

 a similar attack, also not previously observed, was sent to me 

 from Llanina, New Quay, South Wales, by Mr. C. R. Longcroft, 

 who wrote as follows : — ' I have sent you some specimens of 

 Marie Louise pears, of which there was a splendid promise of a 

 crop on two trees, but they are all attacked by grubs within. If 

 you cut one open you will see the culprits. The same thing 

 happened last year, causing the destruction of a crop, as well as 

 in addition having destroyed a fine crop of Beaune Bachelier. I 

 observe that the winter pears have entirely escaped. I have not 

 heard of a similar case in this neighbourhood, and during my 

 previous experience of many years I never met with or heard of 

 their appearance here.' " Miss Ormerod gives a graphic account 

 of the life-history of the fly, similar to that published by KoUar, 

 and names it, as he had done, the C. nigra of Meigen. 



Another observer to whom we are much indebted, and who 

 has enabled us to clear up the life-history of the pear-midge in 

 England and to determine its name ; is the Rev. E. N. Bloomfield, 

 of Guestling, near Hastings. He writes me word : — " I have 

 observed for some years past that many of my Marie Louise pears 

 were blighted, and opening them found the cause to be yellowish 

 larvge. As I was writing to Mr, E. A. Fitch in June, 1885, I 

 enclosed a few pears, asking him what the larvse were. He 



* Edward Newman sent me affected pears, received from Henry Reeks of 

 Thiuxton, in the spring of 1874 or 1875 isee Entom. viii. 167, 189).— E. A. F. 



