338 



very least, as 1 have suggested before, require from the person from 

 whom tlie nursery stock is bought, a clean bill of health, a guarantee 

 of freedom from injurious insects. With such a guarantee, it is reason 

 able to suppose that damages can be gained if the stock should sub 

 sequeiitly prove to be iufected. No nurseryman could do a wiser thing 

 than habitually to give such a gu irantee, and to advertise the fact 

 that all stock has been thoroughly fumigated before it is sent out. 

 Had such a custom prevailed in the past it is safe to say that a very 

 large proportion of the damage which has been done by injurious 

 insects to orchard trees all over the United States would have been 

 absolutely prevented, and the spread of scale insects in particular 

 would have been limited almost to insignificance. With such a custom 

 prevailing in the future, these- centers of infection, which gather new 

 injurious insects from all parts of the world and distribute them broad- 

 cast upon young plants, will then cease to perform this destructive 

 office, and a large measure of the danger to which every fruit grower is 

 now subject will have been wiped out. 



IS CYRTONEURA C^SIA AN INJURIOUS INSECT? 



By 1). W. COQUILI.ETT. 



On March 10, 1892, four specimens of a muscid fly were received at 

 this office from Prof. G. P. Gillette, accomi)anied by the statement that 

 they were bred from squash roots. A recent study of these specimens 

 indicates that they belong to Cyrtoneura ccesia Meigen, a European 

 species not heretofore reported as occurring in this country (Fig. 32). 



Professor Gillette has given an account of what is evidently the 

 same insect in Bulletin No. 19, of the State Experiment Station of 

 Colorado, under the name of Cyrtoneura stahKlans (?) Fabr., according 

 to the identification by Dr. S. W^. Williston, as stated in a footnote. 

 Professor Gillette terms its larva the "squash root-maggot," and states 

 that when the early-planted squashes were beginning to send out 

 vines many of them wilted and died, the ground at their bases becom- 

 ing wet with their juices, and upon examination it was found that the 

 stems of these plants beneath the surface of the ground had been 

 completely honey-combed by a white, dipterous larva. In the adjacent 

 soil, the eggs, larva-, and i)ui)aria of this insect occurred as late as 

 July 13, and from some of these puparia the flies issued on the last 

 day of July. The eggs were of a pure white color, about 1.25'"'" long, 

 ribbed lengthwise excepting on one side, which was perfectly smooth; 

 the}' were deposited in clusters between the earth and the stems of the 

 I)lants. 



This same insect was also bred by the writer at Anaheim, Cal., during 

 the winter of 1884, from larvit found in the moist soil beneath a wooden 



