FRIT FLY, 51 



would have allowed of its safety, by use of autumn measures of 

 prevention. 



Frit Fly. Oscinis frit, L. ; ? Oscinis vastator, Curtis. 



Oscinis vastatoe. 



Frit Fly, nat. size and mag. ; maggot and chrysalis, magnified, nat. length 

 respectively an eighth and somewhat over the eighth of an inch. 



The injury which the Frit Fly causes in this country is usually by 

 means of its small whitish, legless maggot living in the heart of the 

 young Oat plants in spring, or early summer, and thus destroying the 

 shoot in which it feeds, by eating out the centre. It is an attack that 

 is very rarely reported at all, and it has been only once (namely, in the 

 year 1888) that observations have been sent in of the infestation doing 

 really serious and widespread mischief. In that year the attack was 

 especially bad in the south-west of England in various districts, from 

 Taunton, in Somerset, to the extreme west of Cornwall, and was 

 reported also from various other localities, ranging across England, as 

 Cirencester, Reading, Tetsworth, and other places. But the matter of 

 special interest regarding this attack, which we have only been able to 

 complete the investigation of in this past summer, is to learn how 

 many broods the insect has, or can have, in this country, and where 

 they are to be found. 



In the samples of spring or early summer form of attack sent me, 

 the maggots which had ruined the plants might be found turning to 

 little brown oval chrysalids towards the end of June, and the fly was 

 appearing, also from attacked Oat plants, about the 17th of July. 

 But it was not to be supposed that these little bright black, shining, two- 

 winged flies, hardly the eighth of an inch in length, lived on to infest 

 the spring Oats of the following year, more especially as we know that 



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