22 DESTRUCTIVE INSECTS OF VICTORIA : 



Our plate shows the larva, pupa, and the perfect insect, 

 both life size and magnified, and also the grubs at work 

 in a tomato. Mr. Froggatt says that in New South Wales 

 it infests decaying tomatoes, potatoes, egg-fruit, and other 

 of the Solanacece. In Victoria, the chief trouble would 

 appear to be in the tomato, and hundreds of acres have 

 been ruined by this pest, and the fruit rendered absolutely 

 unfit for use. 



In speaking of a closely allied fly, Drosophila, Major 

 Broun says " This little cosmopolitan fly has become a 

 great nuisance, especially during warm weather, when it 

 attacks all sorts of fruit, more particularly bananas, 

 oranges, and pineapples which have been bruised or begun 

 to decay. If it confined its attention entirely to decaying 

 fruit we might class it, along with many useful insects 

 belonging to different orders, as a natural scavenger or 

 sanitary agent, but it unfortunately also commits havoc 

 with good fruit that has been cut. In order to test its 

 habits more thoroughly, I left uncovered two Australian 

 pineapples, out of which I had cut the maggots of the 

 Queensland Fruit Fly (Tephritis Tryoni) in my office on 

 the wharf last February. All decayed or infested portions 

 were carefully cut away so that the exposed surface was 

 perfectly good and sound. A few of these flies were in 

 my office ; they soon found the pines, and it is no 

 exaggeration to state that within a fortnight hundreds of 

 their maggots and chrysalids occupied the fruit, whilst the 

 newly -emerged flies annoyed me so much when writing that 

 I had to clear out the whole brood. Similar experiments 

 with oranges and bananas need not be detailed, as the 

 case of the pineapples show how prolific the fly is." 



The genus Drosophila is well known to vignerons and 

 fruit-growers, the former especially, as the tiny fly which 

 infests the wine casks in the summer. My reason for giving 

 the experiences of so capable an entomologist as Major 

 Broun is to support the views which I have myself held 

 regarding the Fruit Fly, which have been so frequently 



