54 



dead at the end of even six months. Their vitality is astonishing. 

 No extremity of hunger or thirst seems to kill them and water does 

 not drown them. They are perfectly amphibious. 



INJURIES TO GRAIN. 



This insect effects its injury by sucking the milky juice from the 

 young kernel, without any apparent gnawing of the surface, thus 

 causing the grain to shrivel and blight, the heads remaining sub- 

 stantially unfilled. Not unfrequently the crop is utterly ruined, and 

 the loss in whole states, like New York and Ohio, has occasionally 

 reached a total of two-thirds or three-fourths the entire average 

 yield. 



REMEDIES. 



No application of remedial or preventive measures has hitherto 

 arrested the ravages of the midge, although it is not impossi- 

 ble that they have somewhat mitigated the gravity of its attack. 

 The only ones hitherto suggested which even promise usefulness are 

 those of destroying the screenings of the mill when the wheat is 

 threshed and cleaned immediately after harvest ; or, for the pur- 

 pose of getting rid of the midge larvae remaining on the grain, that 

 of deep plowing of the old fields of wheat with the hope that the 

 larvaB remaining in the ground may thus be buried beyond the hope 

 of resurrection, when their transformations are completed the follow- 

 ing year. 



Besides these, we have the heroic remedy of refraining from the 

 cultivation of wheat where the success of the crop is threatened by 

 the previous appearance of the midge, — doubtless the most effective 

 measure provided it be generally adopted. 



5. The Wheat Bulb Worm. 



(Meromyza americana, Fitch.) 



Order Diptera. Family Oscinid^. 



(Plate IV. Figs. 4-9.) 



Since the outbreak of this insect in Fulton county, described in 

 my report for last year, it seems to have entirely disappeared from 

 that locality, not a single field, this year, having given the slightest 

 evidence of its presence ; a fact doubtless due to the destruction 

 effected by the parasite described by me in the article above men- 

 tioned. 



Indeed, in all our observations and collections made in different 

 parts of the State during the past season, no evidence was seen of 

 anything more than trivial injury by this insect until late in October, 

 when Mr. N. S. King, of Normal, called my attention to a field of 

 rye which had been mysteriously checked in its growth and seemed 

 likely to be entirely ruined. An examination of this field made on 



