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XXXVIII. Note Dipterologice. No. 6.—On the minute 
species of dipterous insects, especially Muscide, 
which attack the different kinds of Cereal crops. 
By J. O. Westwoop, M.A., F.L.8., &e. 
[Read November 2nd, 1881.] 
Puate XXII. 
Tue Cereal crops in this country occasionally suffer to a 
very considerable extent by the attacks of various minute 
species of dipterous insects belonging to the families 
Tipulide and Muscide. In the former family, the 
Cecidomyia tritici is especially injurious by cepositing its 
eggs with the assistance of its long telescope-like ovipositor 
in the centre of the flower of the wheat when in blossom ; 
the small yellow larve, hatched from which eggs, eating 
the pollen, and thus preventing the impregnation of the 
flower and rendering the ears abortive. The history of 
this insect was first detailed by the late Hon. President 
of our Society, the Rev. W. Kirby, in the third volume 
of the Linnean Transactions, p. 246 (1795), continued in 
vol. iv., p. 280 (1798), and in vol. v., p. 96 (1799). 
The Hessian fly (Cecidomyia destructor, Say), fortu- 
nately not yet detected in England, and at first regarded 
as identical with the C. tritici, differs from that species 
in the habit of its larve feeding at the crown of the root 
of the wheat plants, or at the first joint within the sheath 
of the leaf, where whole clusters of the pupx are to be 
found. Say, in Journ. Acad. Nat. Science. Philadelph. 
vol. i., p. 45; Asa Fitch, The Hessian-fly, in Trans. N. 
York Agric. Soc., vol. v. and vi.; and Kollar, ‘ Treatise 
on Injurious Insects,’ translated by Miss Loudon, p. 118. 
Another species of Tipulide, most probably also be- 
longing to the genus Cecidomyia, was described by Dr. 
John Nep. Sauter, in Germar’s ‘Magazin der Ento- 
mologie,’ and in Kollar’s ‘ Treatise on Injurious Insects,’ 
under the name of Tipula cerealis, as injuring barley and 
spelt (a kind of dwarf wheat) in the Grand Duchy of 
Baden, the vermilion-coloured larve measuring one to 
one and a half lines in length, appearing in May and 
TRANS. ENT. SOc. 1881.—PART Iv. (DEC.) 
