44 



without separating them, and also in fall, including those found in 

 volunteer wheat, this latter species and other Oscinidte. The reference 

 in the Prairie Farmer seems to have been drawn out by a notice in the 

 Michigan Fanner of a new wheat insect in that State, described as the 

 product of a greenish fly about three-sixteenths of an inch in length, 

 whose larva is a white worm one-fourth of an inch long, ribbed, without 

 feet, with two forked lines on its forehead, found in the straw above 

 the upper joint, where it devours the juices which would otherwise 

 ascend to the head, but which denote the presence of the worm in the 

 straw by turning white prematurely when the grain is in the milk. 

 There is also here reference to the presence of "9 eggs * * * 

 foimd in a single straw, one of which had just hatched,'^ but which 

 eggs, so called, are now known to have been the bodies of a minute 



parasitic mite, whose 

 rounded form is not unlike 

 that of an egg and which 

 is occasionally found 

 attacking the maggot in 

 the straws. 



Doctor Fitch did not 

 rear the flies which he 

 described, l)ut collected 

 this in connection with 

 several species of Oscinis 

 by sweeping in the wheat 

 fields with an insect net. 

 Being familiar with the 

 grain attacking habits of 

 similar insects in Europe, 

 he expected, as he says, to 

 rear the flies from the 

 growing wheat plants at 

 different seasons, but fail- 

 ing, as he states, to do this, contented himself with describing the flies 

 without attempting to connect them with the injuries which he clearly 

 observed. Nothing further appears to have transpired relative to this 

 insect until in the year 1867, when Doctor Riley reared the fly from 

 larvse working in the growing stems of wheat, immediately above the 

 upper joint, in the month of June, and in Missouri. In this case the 

 flies appeared during the first week of July, after a pupal period of 

 twelve to fourteen days. These facts were published in the Rural New 

 Yorker for January 28, 1869, and in his first report as State entomol- 

 ogist of Missouri he discussed the insect and gave illustrations of the 

 adult, larval, and pupal stages, but does not appear to have suspected 

 the occurrence of a second brood later in the season. In 1876 a farmer 

 of Hinckley, Ohio, reported it as attacking his spring wheat. '^ We 



Fig. 14. — Greater wheat stem-maggot {Meromysa americnnn) 

 a, mature fly; b, larva; c, piiparium; d, infested wheat stem- 

 all enlarged except d (from Marlatt). 



« Country Gentleman, July 27, 1879. 



