THE MELON FLY. 3 



WHAT THE MELON FLY IS LIKE. 



The melon fly, like other so-called " fruit flies," is similar to the 

 ordinary house fly in some respects ; the adult lays small white eggs 

 from which hatch larvae, or maggots, which when full grown trans- 

 form into pupae. Later the adult emerges from the pupa, as the 

 butterfly does from the chryalis, and the cycle of life — adult, egg, 

 larva, pupa — is repeated with each successive generation. Fig- 

 ure 1 shows an adult melon fly about to lay eggs in the bud of a 

 watermelon. Note the relative size of the fly and the bud. The 

 adult female, greatly enlarged, is shown in figure 2. When it is 

 remembered that the adult is from one-fourth to one-third of an 

 inch long, that its body is of a yellowish to a yellowish-brown color, 



Fig. 2. — Adult female of the melon fly. Greatly enlarged. (Authors' illustration.) 



and the markings between the wings, which appear white in the 

 figure, are bright canary yellow in the living insect, and that the 

 wings are banded with dark brown, it will not be difficult to recog- 

 nize this pest. 



The female fly drills small, pinhole-like openings in the skin of 

 vegetables with the sharp tip of her body, called the ovipositor. 

 Through these punctures she lays her white eggs, which are about one 

 twenty-fifth of an inch long. If a small squash flower be cut open 

 after the female fly has laid her eggs, a small cavity containing the 

 eggs, such as is illustrated by figure 3, is shown. The larvae, or mag- 

 gots, that hatch from the eggs feed in various parts of the host plant. 

 They have two black hooklike processes in the head that serve as 

 jaws in aiding them to break up their food and to force their way 



