94 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
appears to be a species of Holcus or Milium, is the appropriate 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 pumilionis) intro- 
duces 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 (Margarita 
secalis), which eats the culm of this plant within the vagina, thus destroys 
many ears. In common with wheat and barley, it also suffers from Leeu- 
wenhoek’s wolf and the weevil, when stored in granaries, 
Barley \ikewise, another of our most valuable grains, has several insect 
foes, besides the beetle ( Zabrus gibbus), already alluded to (p. 134.). 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 Bier= 
kander also assails the plant. A tenth part of the produce of this grain, 
Linné affirms, is annually destroyed in Sweden by another fly not yet 
discovered in Britain ( Oscinis frit), which does the mischief by getting into 
the ear; as does likewise O. Jineata F. Dr. J. N. Sauter has described’ a 
fly which he calls Tipula cerealis (most probably a species of _Cecidomyia), 
the larve 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 
1813 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 Linné, which may be 
called Tinea hordei ( Ypsolophus granellus ?), devours 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 selecting 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.° 
1 Circulio testaceus, Ent. Brit. } 
2 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. 
3 Ann. Ent. Soc. de France, viii. p. xiii. 
4 Proceed, of Ent. Soc. Lond, Oct. 5, 1840. 
5 Kollar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &e. 124. 
6 Act. Stockh. 1700, 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 larva 
of the little moth (Tinea granella L.), the wolf of Leeuwenhoek before referred to. 
On visiting those of Messrs. 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 larve 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 wooden floor of the story 
above. What was remarkable, as Mr. Raddon communicated to the Entomological 
