[1900 



CORN. 



Wheat-bulb Fly. Hi/lewyio coarctata, Fallen. 



Wheat-bulb Fly (Hijlenujia coarctata), magnified, and lines showing natural 

 size ; maggots and chrysalids, natural size and magnified ; mouth-apparatus, and 

 extremity of tail, with tubercles, magnified ; infested plant. 



The maggot of the Wheat-bulb Fly (figured above) sometimes does 

 a good deal of mischief by feeding in the stem of the young Wheat 

 plant, but it is not an attack that often occurs. How long the infes- 

 tation may have been present in this country does not appear to be 

 certainly known, but it was first certainly identified in the year 1882. 

 Since then it has been reported as a young Wheat pest in 1886 ; also 

 in the years from 1888 to 1892 inclusive ; and in 1891, in just sufiicient 

 amount for its presence to be mentioned ; but since then until the past 

 season, when it caused a noticeable amount of mischief in one English 

 and two Scottish localities, it has not been observed (or at least not 

 reported) in sufiicient amount to be worth remark. 



The two-winged flies, as seen natural size, are much like the very 

 common and well-known " Onion Flies " in general appearance. Seen 

 magnified, the males have the body between the wings grey, with the 

 sides lighter and the back indistinctly striped ; the abdomen hairy, 

 oblong, narrow, flat, and ashy-coloured, with an indistinct narrow 

 stripe along the back ; end segments grey ; wings with narrow veins ; 

 legs black with pale shanks. The females difler in having both the 

 body between the wings and the abdomen pale ash-grey and immacu- 

 late, and the four hinder thighs, as well as the shanks, pale. 



The maggots are about a quarter inch long, whitish, legless, cylin- 

 drical, and somewhat lessened towards the front end, which is furnished 



