THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



pale, translucent and plump, sinking more or 

 less into the stalk bj- the depleting process kept 

 up. 



"In an article in a .St. Louis paper I de- 

 scribed, last June, the process of ovi- 

 position on the leaves, and my own obser- 

 vations in Missouri accord entirely with 

 those of E. Tilghman, recorded in 1820, 

 and of E. C. Herrick, in 1844, and quoted 

 by Fitch in his essay on the Hessian V\\ 

 (.\lbany, 1846 1, with the exception that they 

 do not mention the exceptional habit of 

 pushing the eggs between the loose sheath 

 and the stalk, owing doubtless to the fact 

 that their observations were made solely on 

 the autumn brood of flies ovipositing on the 

 young plants, the habit being more com- 

 mon in the early summer brood when the 

 plants are larger." 



Mr. William Strong of Kalamazoo 

 County, Michigan, thus descriijes the pro- 

 cess, adding some particulars of interest : 



I have seen the wheat plant with many of the 

 maggots at work, before there was any stalk for 

 the fly to lay its eggs on, by introducing its 

 extensile abdomen tip under the leaf sheath. 

 Even this Fall I have seen this very thing when 

 there was as yet but one shoot from the kernel, 

 which was sowed with a drill, that if the flv had 

 deposited the eggs under the leaf on the stalk, if 

 there had been one there, she would have been 

 obliged to use a spade to dig to get a chance. 

 ******** 



A reason given by some why the fiy does not 

 injure red wheat as much as white, is because 

 the leaf of the red grows so long and slants down 

 from the shoot, so that when the egg hatches, the 

 maggot works down the wrong way. falls to the 

 ground, and so many fail to harm the wheat. 



The flies of the second brood are, in 

 Southern Michigan, ready to deposit their 

 eggs late in April or early in May " on 

 spring wheat or barley which is sufificiently 

 advanced, in lieu of which they deposit on 

 the wheat again, not on the basal or radical 

 leaves, but on the leaves which will be 

 above the first or second, rarely the third 

 joints." (Cook.) 



Habits of the Larva. — As soon as the 

 footless larva (Fig. 46, l>) or maggot hatches, 

 it makes its way down the leaf to the base 

 of the sheath, which in the young winter 

 wheat is at the crown of the root. " Here," 

 says Herrick, " it fastens, lengthwise and 

 head downwards, to the tender stalk, and 

 lives upon the-sap. It does not gnaw the 



stalk, nor does it enter the central cavity 

 thereof ; but as the larva increases in size, 

 it gradually becomes imbedded in the sub- 

 stance of the stalk. After taking its station, 

 the larva moves no more, gradually loses 

 its reddish color and wrinkled appearance, 

 becomes plump and torpid, is at first semi- 

 translucent, and then -more and more 

 clouded with internal white spots, and 

 when near maturity, the middle of the in- 

 testinal parts is of a greenish color. In 

 five or six weeks (^varying with the season ! 

 the larva begins to turn brown, and soon 

 becomes of a bright chestnut color, bear- 

 ing some resemblance to a flaxseed." 



DR. ASA FITCH. 



In the death of Dr. .\sa Fitch, Economic 

 Entomology in this country has lost its 

 oldc;st and ablest votary, and as a follower in 

 the path he so worthily trod, we reverently 

 pay brief tribute to the memory of one 

 who spent the larger part of his life in the 

 untiring and successful study of the insects 

 injurious to agriculture and horticulture. 

 While his earlier writings were contempo- 

 raneous with those of Harris, and his later 

 ones with those of Walsh, he will, judged 

 by the work he did, rank first among the 

 fathers of applied entomology in America. 



From a biographical sketch of the de- 

 ceased, by E. P. Thurston, in a late num- 

 ber of the Popular Science Monthly, and 

 from additional notes in Psyche, and the 

 American Naturalist, we draw the follow- 

 ing information : 



Dr. Fitch was the second son of the 

 Hon. Asa Fitch, M. D., and was born Feb- 

 ruary 24, 1809, at Fitch's Point, Salem, 

 Washington County, New York. Having 

 visited the academy at the village of Salem, 

 he entered, in his eighteenth year, the 

 Rensselaer School at Troy, where he soon 

 became interested in natural history, and 

 especially in entomology. He graduated 

 with honor with the class of 1827 and, at the 

 instance of his father, began immediately 

 afterward a course of medical studies at 

 the Vermont Academy of Medicine, at 

 Castleton. Here he continued to give 

 much of his time to the study of insects. 



