Or 
~~ 
THE BLACK-HEADED GRASS MAGGOT. 
(Sciara, sp. ?) 
Order Diptera. Family Mycreropuinipa. 
(Plate LV, Figs. 5-9.) 
This insect, although not seriously injurious, as far as known, 
nevertheless sometimes makes a peculiar attack on seed corn in the 
ground, at a time and under circumstances to occasion considerable 
alarm, and possibly to do some mischief. For the purpose of reas- 
suring those who may encounter it in their corn fields, if for no 
other reason, it will doubtless be worth while to treat it briefly. 
This larva first came to my knowledge as a corn insect, late in 
May of the present year, at which time Dr. Boardman, of Stark 
county, transmitted to me a footless, smooth, white, cylindrical 
larva, about one-half inch long, with a jet-black head, which had 
been received by him from a farmer of his county with the in- 
formation that it was destroying the newly planted corn in the 
. ground by eating out the substance of the grain, sometimes as many 
_as three or four being found in a single kernel. By a letter from 
Dr. Boardman, dated May 28, I learned that the field attacked had 
been in pasture for ten years preceding, partly in blue grass and 
partly in timothy, and that a portion of it had been broken up for 
corn in the fall, and the remainder not until spring. The larve 
were very abundant throughout the field, not only in the grains of 
corn, but everywhere in the turf, where they were apparently feed- 
ing on the dead and decaying grass. The blue grass ground con- 
tained more of them than the timothy, and that plowed in spring 
more than that broken up the previous autumn. Where they were 
thickest, the earth was said to be literally alive with them. The 
corn was just coming up, but was in very bad condition, and a 
large part of 1t was being eaten up by the maggots. They were 
also found abundant in many other fields in this vicinity, but only 
where the ground had been in grass the preceding year. 
On the 30th of May, a farmer living near Towanda sent me ex- 
amples of maggots which he had noticed in his corn, together with 
some of the kernels injured by them, which, on examination, proved 
to be the same as those above referred to. The corn had, most of 
it, sprouted but feebly, the season being excessively cold and wet, 
and otherwise especially unfavorable. Some of the grains were 
literally packed with the larve, one having no less than ninety- 
three clustered in and upon it. 
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