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REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST AND BOTANIST 173 
SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 
DIVISION OF ENTOMOLOGY. 
CEREALS. 
Reports from all parts of the Dominion announce that the grain crop of 1902 has 
been abundant and of good quality with little injury by the ordinary insect pests. Any 
injury mentioned is from weather. In British Columbia Mr. J. R. Anderson says : 
‘Weather conditions were good and the crops correspondingly so. The yield of wheat 
in the Okanagan was very large and the quality extra good.’ In the North-west 
Territories Mr. A. W. Peterson described the crop of all kinds of grain as ‘ enormous 
beyond precedent and of the finest quality.’ Crops of fall wheat seen by me at Pincher 
Creek and among the Mormon settlements of south-western Alberta can only be described 
as magnificent, notwithstanding the excessive rains of June and July. In Manitoba 
Mr. McKellar sums up the reports from his correspondents as follows: ‘The best crop 
ever raised in Manitoba ; wheat No. 1 hard or No. 1 Northern. It is hardly possible 
to describe the perfect weather with which this province was blessed during harvest and 
threshing. Never in the history of the province was so much work done in the short 
period of ten weeks, and the garnering of the greatest crop ever grown in the province 
was done almost without interruption. Of our crop of over 50 millions of bushels of 
wheat, half was already marketed by the end of November. Threshing was practically 
finished and more fall ploughing done by the middle of November than was done alto- 
gether last fall. All grain crops are equally large; we have upwards of 35 million 
bushels of plump heavy oats and nearly 12 millions of barley.’ Prof. James reports the 
yield of fall wheat in Ontario as ‘above the average for 20 years, and spring wheat, good 
both in yield and quality.’. ‘The chief damage to crops everywhere was from rain ; 
comparatively little injury was done by insect pests, despite the fears entertained of the 
Hessian Fly.’ The same satisfactory reports come from Quebec and the maritime pro- 
vinces. Fathe: Burke, of Prince Edward Island, writes in November last : ‘ The harvest 
is abundant, and, as the loss from insects has been almost nil, the farmer wears his sun- 
niest smile in the presence of bursting barns and well filled cellars.’ 
The only insect enemies of cereal crops requiring mention this year, are the Hessian 
Fly and locusts, in Manitoba. 
THE HESSIAN FLY 
(Cecidomyia destructor, Say). 
The remarkable and almost entire disappearance of the Hessian Fly from the wheat 
fields of Ontario in 1902 after the excessive injury in 1901, is a subject of constant and 
grateful comment by correspondents. There has been, however, slight injury in Prince 
Edward Island. A few straws containing puparia were sent in by Mr. E. Wyatt, of 
Pleasant Grove, P.E.I., but the loss in the field from which they were taken was hardly 
perceptible, and no other correspondents make mention of it. In travelling through 
Prince Edward Island in August last, I could neither hear of nor see any trace of this 
pest. The most notable attack by the Hessian Fly in 1902 has been in the wheat crop 
of Manitoba, and several specimens of injured straws were received in September and 
October. Reports were also received in June of injury to the root shoots of growing 
wheat at Treesbank, Man. This attack at the root is very seldom noticed by farmers, 
