WHEAT-BULB FLY; 35 



good heavy Cambridge roller at the tune of sowing, but often, as in my 

 case last year, the land was not sufficiently dry, and it could not be 

 done. Fallow is undoubtedly best sown with Oats or Barley." 



Mr. W. Creese, of Teddington, near Tewkesbury, who has had long 

 experience of this pest, favoured me with the following observation, 

 which, it will be seen, turns still on the point of the grub following 

 fallow ; and in the very same field, and after the very same crop, attack 

 not occurring where this preceding crop had been kept on late, so that 

 the ground was protected by it and not fallowed. Mr. Creese 

 remarked: — " When walking over a neighbour's farm, I saw that two 

 sides of a field had failed from the grub. The land had been skimmed, 

 and planted again with April Wheat. A few acres in the middle of 

 the field were spared, and promise a heavy crop. The explanation 

 given me was that the vetches on this portion were kept for seed, and 

 the land was ploughed late, instead of being, as, on the other parts, 

 mown early and the land summer-fallowed." 



The following note is still on the same lines of the attack occurring 

 where land has been greatly exposed, even where not actually fallowed, 

 and this also we have had evidence of in previous years. Mr. W. 

 Wiles Green, of the Elms, Manea, Cambs., writing on the 16th of May, 

 mentioned : — " The Wheat-bulb maggot has, I think, now done its 

 worst, and, I am sorry to say, has in many instances left us but a 

 poor patchy crop. The injury, I may say, in most or all cases, is to 

 the Wheat crop sown after Oats." .... " My opinion is that the 

 mischief was done after the Oats were cut. It will be in your remem- 

 brance that the latter end of August, and for some time then, the weather 

 was very hot and fine, and the Oat crop, being a heavy one, had to be 

 mown very close, leaving the land in some places quite bare." 



Mr. Wiles Green further wrote : — " You say, in reference to the 

 attack, that part of some fields only are attacked. I know several 

 cases, this year, where part of the field was sown or planted with 

 Potatoes, and the rest with Oats. The Wheat after Potato is a very 

 fine crop ; after Oats, a very thin, patchy one ; and the difference is so 

 sharply defined you can see (one may say) to an inch." Also, the 

 remark, " I am somewhat afraid the only remedy we have is not to 

 sow Wheat on land that has the July or August sun shining on it," 

 appears at present only too near the real state of the case. 



But (resuming the past season's report) on the 21st of May, Mr. 

 Eardley Mason, of the Sycamores, Alford, Lines., sent me observations 

 of three attacks in the neighbourhood of Alford. In one at Willoughby, 

 the attack, examined on the 17th May, was then advanced to the pupal 

 or chrysalis state, and a full third of the plants were estimated to have 

 been destroyed. This crop was after a fallow. On the following day, 

 the 18th, in a field at Cumberworth, some of the pests were still to be 



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