THE OSCINIANS. 621 



legs ; the wings are broad, rounded at the tip, and clouded 

 with brown in large spots, forming three wide, irregular 

 bands across them. 



Many of the smallest flies, belonging to several other 

 groups, are placed near the end of the order. One of them 

 has a head like a hammer-headed shark, short and very 

 wide, with large globular eyes on each side of it. This little 

 insect has been found in considerable numbers, flying near 

 the ground, on the edges of banks. It is the Sphyracephala 

 hrevicomis of Mr, Say, and is figured and described in the 

 third volume of his " American Entomology." The well- 

 known cheese-maggots are the young of a fly (^Piopjiila 

 casei), hot more than three twentieths of an inch long, of a 

 shining black color, with the middle and hinder legs mostly 

 yellowish, and the wings transparent like glass. 



Some minute flies, belonging to a family called Oscinid^, 

 are found to be very injurious to wheat, rye, and barley, in 

 Europe. One of them (^Oscinis frit), a shining black fly, 

 with yellowish feet, and measuring about one tenth of an 

 inch in length, lays its eggs in the blossoms of barley, the 

 grains of which afterwards perish in consequence of the 

 depredations of the maggots of this fly ; and Linnseus states 

 that a tenth part of the produce of the barley in Sweden is 

 thereby annually destroyed. The larvae or maggots of Os- 

 cinis lineata, Ohhrops pumilionis, Chlorops glabra, and other 

 flies allied to them, live within the lower part of the stems 

 of wheat, rye, and barley, thereby impoverishing the plants, 

 and causing them to become stinted in their growth. They 

 are rather larger insects than the frit-fly, and have black and 

 yellow stripes on the thorax. 



It is highly probable that some of these species, or other 

 Oscinians, with similar habits, may be found in the stems 

 of wheat and other grains in this country, and perhaps also 

 in the ears. Several kinds of small flies, evidently different 

 from the Hessian and wheat flies, have often been observed 

 here, in fields of grain, when the plants are in flower ; but 



