3. Injuries by footless maggots, which bury themselves in the seed 
grain. 
Two rather common injuries to seed corn in the ground are due to 
small white maggots without legs, one apparently headless, with much 
the form and general appearance of a very small blow-fly larva, and 
the other with a smooth, conspicuous head of-a shining jet black color. 
The first is known as the seed-corn maggot, and infests corn only, as 
at present understood; and the second is the black-headed grass mag- 
got, normally a grass insect, as its name implies, and injurious to corn 
only when this follows grass. Both these maggots penetrate the kernel, 
feeding on the mealy inner part, and leaving the outer shell. The first 
changes in the course of the summer to a small two-winged fly of the 
general form of the house-fly, and the second becomes a slender, small 
black gnat, roughly resembling the mosquito. The fly of the seed: corn 
maggot is little likely to be noticed in its winged state, but the gnat of 
the grass maggot is frequently seen in very large numbers on and near 
the ground in early spring. 
THE SeED-Corn Maceor. 
(Phorbia fusciceps, ZLett.* ) 
(Plate II., Fig. 6 and 7; and Plate III., Fig. 1 and 2.) 
This maggot penetrates the grain commonly after it sprouts but 
before it appears above ground, killing the germ or the growing shoot 
and finally hollowing out the interior so as to leave only the harder, 
outer parts of the kernel. In specimens of injured seed received by us 
from Altamont, Illinois, the larva had bored a round hole in the grain 
near the edge, and mined in a circular direction around the germ. In 
other grains it had entered at the tip of the germ, and in some beside 
the sprout. In one plant containing a full-grown maggot about two- 
thirds imbedded in the kernel, a root about three inches long had form- 
ed, and a yellowish stalk had grown two inches in height. Still other 
grains had almost the whole interior eaten out. Unsprouted kernels, 
softened by lying in the earth, are also frequently penetrated in a way 
to destroy the grain. Commonly these injuries are trivial in amount, 
but in at least one instance mentioned by Dr. Riley in his First Report 
as State Entomologist of Missouri (p. 154), the crop of a field in New 
Jersey was practically destroyed. 
The adult of this insect is a small two-wineed fly. not unlike a 
house-fly in general appearance, but more diminutive and of a lighter 
form. » The species is known at times to do considerable injury over 
limited areas. It is widely distributed, having been reported from New 
Jersey and New York to Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. It was first 
described under the name Anthomyia zeas is Dr. Rilev, in his First 
Report as State Entomologist of Missouri (p. 154), his specimens hay- 
ing been reared from maggots sent him from New ‘Jersey in 1868. 
Mr. B. D. Walsh next refers to this species in the American En- 
tomologist, Vol. I., 1869, (p. 224), maggots having been sent him from 
Eureka, Missouri. 
* Much additional information concerning this species has been lately pub- 
lished in Bulletin 78 of the Cornell University Experiment Station, Nov., 1894, 
p. 499. 
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