) 
Much is here made of larve attacking the stems of wheat above the 
upper joint, and in connection therewith follows this significant sen- 
tence: ‘‘In one instance nine eggs were found in a single straw, one 
of which had just hatched.” Also, in another journal, we are told 
that specimens of infested straw were forwarded to the Country 
Gentleman from Scipioville, N. Y., in 1879, which the sender stated 
contained eggs, besides larvee and pupx. In both cases the larve 
were almost beyond a doubt those of the greater wheat-stem maggot 
(Meromyza americana Fitch). According to my own cbservation, the 
mites attack the larvee of Meromyza americana in stems of wheat, and 
one can not fail to be struck by the clearness with which the state- 
ments just given describe larvee of this species in the stems of grain 
or grass being attacked by these mites, the gravid female of which 
has every appearance to the unaided eye of being a minute egg. It 
therefore seems not improbable that this mite was abroad over the 
country at the earlier date, 1845, which would antedate by several 
years the description of the species in England by Newport, who 
called attention to the occurrence of this mite as a parasite in the 
nests of a wild bee (Anthophora retusa lL.) in a paper read March 
5, 1850, before the Linnean Society of London. 
In the account given by Dr. T. W. Harris in the second edition 
of his ‘‘Insects Injurious to Vegetation,’ in connection with his 
discussion of the early occurrences of the barley jomtworm (/sosoma 
hordei Harr.), there are two very significant statements that have 
until lately puzzled the writer greatly. On page 4388, edition of 
1852, he says: 
In the summer of 1831, myriads of these flies [meaning the adult Jsosoma] were 
found alive in straw beds in Gloucester, the straw having been taken from the fields 
the year before. An opinion at that time prevailed that the troublesome humors 
wherewith many persons were then afflicted were occasioned by the bites of these 
flies; and it is stated that the straw beds of Lexington, being found to be infested 
with the same insects, were generally burnt. 
The second reference occurs on page 440 of the same volume, in 
which it is stated that “about eight years ago [which would be about 
1844] some of these insects [again referring to the barley jointworm] 
that had come from a straw bed in Cambridge were shown to me. They 
had proven very troublesome to children sleeping on the bed, their 
bites or stings being followed by considerable inflammation and irri- 
tation, which lasted several days. So numerous were the insects that 
it was found necessary to empty the bedtick and burn the straw.” 
Now, to the writer it has always been puzzling that the adults of 
the barley jointworm, as they were described by Doctor Harris, 
should have been able to bite through bedticking and cause the 
a Description published in Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond., vol. 21, p. 95, 1853. 
[Cir. 118] 
