16 BULLETIN 491, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



or on vines growing wild in the mountains. In one instance the 

 partially mature fruits on a vine growing on a private residence in 

 Manoa Valley were badly attacked. While the deposition of eggs in 

 the partially-grown fruits had produced noticeable deformities in 

 shape and cracks in the rind, a few adults were reared from but one 

 fruit. Fulty mature fruit exposed on the market is free from at- 

 tack, as demonstrated by hanging fruits in jars of melon flies. The 

 flies could not puncture the tough hardened rind. Other species of 

 Passi flora occurring about Honolulu (quad rang idaris, edulis, alata, 

 and foetida) have never been observed infested. 



ORANGE, MANGO, FIG, PAPAYA, PEACH, AND APPLE. 



These fruits have never been known to serve regularly as hosts of 

 the melon fly. O. H. Swezy reared adults from figs growing at 

 Kaimuki. E. M. Ehrhorn (29) reared a single female from a sweet 

 orange from the same place. F. W. Terry reared adults from ripe 

 mangoes in August, 1907. Van Dine (19) reports the papaya as 

 a host fruit in 1907. The writers reared a single fly from peaches in 

 1914. These records of infestation must be considered as excep- 

 tional. Of the many thousand peaches and numerous figs, oranges, 

 mangoes, papayas, and other fruits which normally serve as host for 

 the Mediterranean fruit ffy that the writers have used to obtain 

 fruit-fly material, none, except the single peach referred to above, 

 have yielded melon flies. 



It seems probable that the melon fly will oviposit rarely in these 

 fruits. Larvae hatching from eggs deposited by females in confine- 

 ment in apples succeeded in the fruits of softer texture in reaching 

 maturity. Others hatching in apples of firmer texture failed to 

 penetrate the pulp, but crawled out through the puncture opening 

 and died close by it on the surface of the fruit. 



CABBAGE AND KOHLRABI. 



Fullawav stated (17) in 1915 that the melon fly had often been 

 reported infesting the heart of cabbage, but that the infestation was 

 not at all common and is considered to be due to abnormal conditions 

 in the plants and of a secondar}^ nature. In 1913 the same writer 

 records cabbage as a host plant. No other writers have reported 

 melon-fly infestations of cabbage. The writers have examined cab- 

 bages without discovering melon-fly larvae. They have frequently 

 found larvae closely resembling those of the melon fly and from them 

 have reared Acritochaeta pulvinata Grims. The larvae of this fly 

 are found very generally in decaying vegetable matter about gar- 

 dens in Hawaii. The writers have on several occasions removed 

 them from beneath the sound leaves of cabbage heads, whence they 



