INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 129 



^a^Ms F. (^Sylvanus Latr.) ; and an Indian grain, called in the country 

 Joharre,- -which appears to be a species of Holcus or Milium, is the ap- 

 propriate food of another species of Calandra^, which I found abundant 

 in it. 



Rye, in this island, is an article of less importance than wheat ; but in 

 some parts of the Continent it forms a principal portion of the bread-corn. 

 Providence has also appointed the insect means of causing a scarcity of 

 this species of food. The fly before noticed (^Oscinis pumillionis) in- 

 troduces its eggs into the heart of the shoots of rye, and occasions so 

 many to perish, that from eight to fourteen are lost in a square of two 

 feet.^ This fly, in 1839, did much damage to the rye at Grignon, in 

 France^, and in 1841 to that near Kingston, Surrey.^ A small moth, also 

 {ISflargaritia sccalis), which eats the culm of this plant within the vagina, 

 thus destroys many ears. In common with wheat and barley, it also 

 suffers from Leeuwenhoek's wolf and the weevil, when stored in granaries. 



Barley likewise, another of our most valuable grains, has several insect 

 foes, besides the beetle (^Zabrus gibbus), a\ready oWuded to (p. 125.). 

 The gelatinous larva of a saw-fly {Tenthredo L.) preys upon the upper 

 surface of the leaves, and so occasions them to wither. Musca hordei of 

 Bierkander also assails the plant. A tenth part of the produce of this 

 grain, Linne affirms, is annually destroyed in Sweden by another fly, not 

 yet discovered in Britain (^Oscinis frit), which does the mischief by get- 

 ting into the ear ; as does likewise O. lineata F. Dr. J. N. Sauter has 

 described a fly which he calls Tipula cerealis (most probably a species of 

 Cecidomyia), the larvae of which, eating the stem of barley and spelt 

 (a kind of dwarf wheat), did great injury to these crops in the grand 

 duchy of Baden in 18J3 and 1816 ; and the same, or an allied species, 

 is supposed to have formerly destroyed the oats in Styria and Carinthia.^ 

 A small species of moth described by Reaumur, though not named by 

 Linne, which may be called Tinea hordei {Ypsolophus grannellusT), 

 devous the grain when laid up in the granary. This fly deposits several 

 eggs, perhaps twenty or thirty, on a single grain ; but as one grain only is 

 to be the portion of one larva, they disperse when hatched, each select- 

 ing one for itself, which it enters from without at a place more tender than 

 the rest ; and this single grain furnishes a sufficient supply of food to 

 support the caterpillar till it is ready to assume the pupa. Concealed 

 within this contracted habitation, the little animal does nothing that may 

 betray it to the watchful eye of man, not even ejecting its excrements from 

 its habitation ; so that there may be millions within a heap of corn, where 

 you would not suspect there was one.® 



' Curculio testaceus, Ent. Brit. 



' Marsham in Linn. Trans, ii. 80. De Geer notices the injury done by this fly to rye, 

 and observes that before it had been attributed to frost, ii. 68. 

 ' Ann. Ent. Soc. de France, viii. p. xiii. 



* Proceed, of Ent. Soc. Land. Oct. 5, 1840. 



* Kollar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, tec. 124. 



« Act. Stockh. 1750. 128. Reaum. ii. 480, &c. Barley, like wheat, and indeed all 

 white corn, is much injured in the granaries of the corn-dealer by the larvae of the little 

 moth (Tinea granella L.) the wolf of Leeuwenhoek before referred to. On visiting those 

 of Messr.-?. Hellicar, Bristol, in October. 1837, with my friend W. Raddon, Esq., we found 

 the barley lying on the floors covered with a gauze-like tissue formed of the fine silken 

 threads spun by the larvae in traversing its surface, on recently quitting it for the purpose 

 of undergoing their metamorphosis in the ceiling of the granary, formed of the joists and 



