HOW TO GROW GOOD CORN. 199 



stamens and pistils ; later, upon the grain, which is always shrivelled 

 and lost where the attack has been made. 



The colour of the maggots is so much like that of the red-rust as 

 often to be mistaken for it ; the difference, however, between the 

 bunches of minute granular fungi and living worms will be made 

 apparent to the most careless observer by the assistance of a common 

 pocket lens. "We find two terms in use for these yellow appearances 

 — namely, red-rust and red-gum ; and as we have so often found them 

 employed indiscriminately, we would restrict the former to the 

 fungus, * thus — Uredo rubigo, red-rust ; and Cecidomyia tritici, red- 

 gum. Our observations on the latter this year have chiefly been 

 made in the counties of Sussex and Gloucester, in both of which we 

 have seen this insidious enemy at work to an alarming extent. In 

 the former county, with a very limited extent of red-rust ; in the 

 latter, the later and more delicate wheats have both red-rust and 

 red-gum in the same crop : and the interest of the subject will be the 

 more forcibly apprehended when we say that in some crops, which, 

 from a first glance at the straw and ears, we should have put down 

 as somewhere about thirty bushels per acre, we have, after a more 

 minute inspection of the ears, estimated at less than twenty bushels ; 

 and, indeed, in one field which we have examined during the last 

 week (August, 1862), affected by the Cladosporium, Uredo, and 

 Cecidomyia, there will scarcely be a yield in good grains of the 

 amount of the seed sown. 



The fly which lays the eggs from which these 

 yellow larvse are derived is of about the size of a 

 gnat, and usually takes the wing in the evening, in 

 which case, if its enemies the bats are not nu- 

 merous, smother fires lighted towards sundown on 

 the wind side of the fields are not only destructive to 

 large numbers, but act as an offensive notice to quit 

 to others. Curtis says : — 



With regard to the Hessian-fly, even if its presence could be as- 

 certained in the early stages, it does not seem possible to devise any 



* See ante, p. 185. 



