REPORTS BY THE HONORARY SCIENTISTS. 315 
Wilts, attacked by a pest which had “destroyed the greater 
part of the crop in the gardens.” . On dissecting the pears, 
which were about the size of marbles, and rotten, I found many 
larve of the pear-midge. ‘The life-history is“as follows :—The 
adult midges issue from their cocoons in the soil early in the 
year, from, in some cases, the end of January on to April and 
even later. The females lay their white eggs in little masses 
inside the blossom of the pear, usually before the flower 
expands, the blossom being pierced for the purpose by means 
of the ovipositor. Schmidberger, quoted in the Journal of 
the Board of Agriculture for September, thus describes the 
process of egg-laying :—‘‘I found the first gall-midge in the 
act of laying its eggs in the blossom; this was on the 12th of 
April. It had fixed itself almost perpendicularly in the middle 
of a single blossom, and having pierced the petal with its 
long ovipositor, it laid its eggs in the anther of the still closed 
blossom. The eggs are whitish, longish, pointed on one side, 
transparent, and from ten to twelve in number.” The eggs 
quickly give up their maggots, which proceed to feed on the pear. 
The number of maggots inside the attacked pear varies. In 
twelve pears picked at random from Mr Forbes’s specimens, the 
numbers were 16, 21, 28, 5, 9, 15, 19, 15, 17, 23, 16,10. In 
the case of the smaller numbers, some of the maggots had already 
left the pears. As a result of their feeding, the pears grow no 
bigger than small marbles, and their interior is quite rotten. 
The shrivelled, misshapen character is a guide to the attack. 
The full-fed larvee leave the pears while these still remain on the 
tree, or they fall to the ground with the pears which they leave 
later. From a second supply of pears which Mr Forbes kindly 
sent at my request near the end of June, the maggots were 
leaving in hundreds, and very interesting it was to see them 
skipping about as they lay on my table. This active movement 
is characteristic of certain species of Cecidomyide, and may be 
well seen in the case of the maggots of C. tiliw, which are found 
inside the galls so common on twigs and flowers of the Lime. 
Having left the pears, the larve enter the soil, where they are 
supposed to lie for some considerable time before pupation, which 
takes place in a thin cocoon. The adults appear in the next spring. 
Description of Midge.—One-tenth of an inch long, and blackish 
~in colour, The antennz are brown coloured and very long. The 
legs are also long. The females, besides having longer antenne 
