THE 



^ra^ltkal ®ttt0m0l0ufei 



A MONTHLY BULLETIN, 



Published by the American Entomological Society, for tbe dissemination of valuable 

 knowledge among Agriculturists and Horticulturists. 



Vol. II, No. 9. 



JUNE, 1867. 



Whole No. 21, 



®h^ ipnictical dfntamologi.^l. 



.^SU^Publisherl by the Amkrican Entomological Society 

 at'their Hall, iHO. 518 South Thirteenth St., Philadelphia. 



^?S!J- Edited by Benj. D. Walsh, Rock Island, Illinois. 



^^ Tkrms — 50 cents a year, in advance, 



^S~ AW subscriptions must date from the commence- 

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j^@* Copies of Volume I, neatly bound in cloth, will 

 be sent to any address, postage paid, for $1.25, or unbound 

 for 55 cents. 



^^^Subscriptions and all other business communica- 

 tions should be addressed to **E. T. Cresson, Secretary of 

 the Entomological Society, Post Office Box 2056, Phila- 

 delphia." Entomological communications to "Benj. D. 

 Walsh, Eock Island, Illinois." 



PHILADELPHIA, JUNE, 1867. 

 THE WHEAT MIDGE. 



[From a letter from S. S. Batbton, Penna.] 

 Enclosed, I send a small box, containing what I 

 take to be the larvie of the "Wheat Midge, (Ceci- 

 domyia tritici), sent to me by an intelligent farmer from 

 the northwest part of Lancaster County, Penna. They 

 were obtained from the low, flat portion of a wheat-field 

 on his farm, under the following circumstances. After 

 a heavy rain, on the 15th of May, he found on this low 

 portion of the field, which had been overflowed by the 

 rain, after the waters subsided, an orange or sulphur-co- 

 lored covering, which he did not immediately examine, 

 but could not account for. In the afternoon of the same 

 day, or the morning after, he went to the place where he 

 saw this yellow substance, jvith a view of obtaining some 

 of it for examin.ation, but was surprised to find that it 

 hadall disappeared. He noticeji, however, that the whole 

 flat and smooth surface where it had previously existed, 

 was punctured by thousands, perhaps millions, of small 

 holes, about the size of an ordinary pin hole. On digging 

 about half an inch beneath the surface, he found the 

 larvae, which I transmit, in countless multitudes, but met 

 with very few of them any where else in the field, and on 

 the higher portions none at all. The field in which these 

 larvse occurred bore a crop of wheat last year. 



Remarks by B. D. W. — Mr. Rathvon is quite 

 right ia supposing the larvse, met with under these 

 extraordinary circumstances, to be those of the com- 

 mon Wheat Midge, alias Milk Weevil, alias Red 

 Weevil. The Natural History of this insect may be 

 thus briefly disentangled from the mass of miscon- 

 ceptions iu which it has been involved by certain 

 Writers. , 



The fly makes its appearance in June, a little 



earlier or later according to the latitude and the 

 season, or to be more precise, it comes out about 

 the time when wheat is in flower. It then de- 

 posits its eggs upon the -ears of the wheat, and 

 these eggs hatch out into little orange-colored mag- 

 guts, about eighth inch long when full grown, 

 which suck out the juices of the future kernel and 

 cause it to shrivel up more or less, according to the 

 number of larva} at work on it. By the time the 

 grain is ripe, the maggots have become full-fed, and 

 the great bulk of them descend to the earth, where 

 they burrow a few inches underground, and not 

 long afterwards construct there, each for itself, a 

 filmy cocoon, more delicate than the finest gold- 

 beaters' skin, gluing it to the surrounding grains of 

 earth so that the whole has the appearance of a little 

 ball of earth. Within this cocoon, according to 

 the practice of all the numerous Willow Gallgnats 

 belonging to the same genus Cecidomi/ia^ the His- 

 tory of which I have detailed in the Proceedings, 

 the insect remains in the larva state without eating 

 anything all through the winter, and until within • 

 a few weeks of the time when the perfect Jlidge is 

 destined to appear, i. e., with this particular spe- 

 cies, until some time in May. It then changes 

 into the pupa state, and some time in June works 

 its way out of its cocoon and to the surface of the 

 ground ; for which purpose all the pupre in this 

 genus are provided with little thorns on the base 

 of their antennce, varying in length and sharpness 

 accordiag to the species, and the more or less dense 

 substance that they have to penetrate in order to 

 emerge to the light of day. Having reached the 

 surface of the ground, the shell of the pupa then 

 bursts open in front, and the winged fly crawls out, 

 the wings being at first short and stumpy, but ra- 

 pidly expanding and growing into their natural 

 size, as is also the ease with moths, &c., when they 

 first come out of the pupa. As with almost all the 

 species of the genus, the females are very much 

 more numerous than the males ; so that it is not 

 improbable that some females deposit fertile eggs 

 without any intercourse whatever with the oppo- 

 site sex. At all events, this has been proved to 

 take place in certain other groups of insects. 



