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lnent. This orchard was very badly infested this year, and a very large 
percentage of the pears of all varieties, except the Kieffers, were 
attacked. It is an interesting fact and one of a great deal of practical 
importance, perhaps, that thns far I have not found a Kieffer pear 
infested. This may not be due entirely to any peculiarity in the fruit 
itself, but to the fact that so far as the midge has extended at present 
the Kieffer blossoms first and perhaps gets a little ahead of the adult 
insect. I had an opportunity this year of watching the oviposition of 
the insects and find that Schmidberger's account, as quoted by Dr. 
Lintner and subsequently in my Bulletin No. 99 of the New Jersey 
Experiment Station, is correct in all essential features. I find that the 
eggs are deposited in little masses in the buds long before they are 
opened. There is no one point that seems to be more favored than 
others in oviposition. Usually the point where the bud is most easily 
penetrated is the place selected, but sometimes it is pierced through 
the side by the female close to the base, or at any point. More usu- 
ally, perhaps, no trace of a puncture is to be discovered, but the ovi- 
positor has been apparently inserted at the point where the petals of 
the future flower were slightly separated. The eggs themselves were 
not attached in all cases to any part of the flower, but seem to be con- 
nected with each other either by a very frail tissue or by a gummy 
excretion. I have not been able to watch the actual oviposition itself, 
but from the mounted specimens it almost appears as if the eggs were laid 
in little masses rather than singly. I am not certain that this is pos- 
sible, and the appearance may be due to a spread of the gummy material 
surrounding the eggs. I had no difficulty whatever in finding the 
eggs in the buds, and usually in those that might be considered as 
normally developed. Very early buds, very far advanced, usually con- 
tained no eggs, and those that were very late, crippled, or retarded 
were also usually bare of them. The very fact that only normal buds 
were infested would seem to indicate that the insects were thus given 
a somewhat better chance, because either very early or very late 
flowers would stand less chance of being pollenized and thus furnishing 
food for the young larvae. I am inclined to believe that in many cases, 
at all events where the bud had been punctured, its opening was 
slightly retarded, and possibly this may be an advantage to the insect, 
giving the egg a little longer time to hatch and make its way into the 
ovary of the flower before the bud actually opens. So far as 1 
examined I found it to be invariable that the young larvae made their 
way into the ovary before the flower opened. While there is not much 
difficulty in finding the eggs in the unopened bud, I did find a very 
great difficulty in seeing the very young larvae in the open flower. 
And those specimens that I did find showed so little differentiation 
from the egg that it seemed almost in some cases as if the egg itself 
had the power of motion, enabling it to get into the plant tissue before 
the opening of the flower. None of the stains that I attempted to use 
