338 
very least, as I have suggested before, require from the person from 
whom the nursery stock is bought, a clean bill of health, a guarantee 
of freedom from injurious insects. With such a guarantee, it is reason 
able to suppose that damages can be gamed if the stock should sub- 
sequently prove to be infected. No nurseryman could do a wiser thing 
than habitually to give such a guarantee, and to advertise the fact 
that all stock has been thoroughly fumigated before it is sent out. 
Had such a custom prevailed in the past it is safe to say that a very 
large proportion of the damage which has been done by injurious 
insects to orchard trees all over - the United States would have been 
absolutely prevented, and the spread of scale insects in particular 
would have been limited almost to insignificance. With such a custom 
prevailing in the future, these- centers of infection, which gather new 
injurious insects from all parts of the world and distribute them broad- 
cast upon young plants, will then cease to perform this destructive 
office, and a large measure of the danger to which every fruit grower is 
now subject will have been wiped out. 
IS CYRTONEURA C^SIA AN INJURIOUS INSECT? 
By U. W. COQUILLETT. 
On March 16, 1892, four specimens of a muscid fly were received at 
this office from Prof. 0. P. Gillette, accompanied by the statement that 
they were bred from squash roots. A recent study of these specimens 
indicates that they belong to Cyrtoneura ccesia Meigen, a European 
species not heretofore reported as occurring in this country (Fig. 32). 
Professor Gillette has given an account of what is evidently the 
same insect in Bulletin No. 19, of the State Experiment Station of 
Colorado, under the name of Cyrtoneura stabulans ( ?) Fabr., according 
to the identification by Dr. S. W. Williston, as stated in a footnote. 
Professor Gillette terms its larva the u squash root-maggot," and states 
that when the early-planted squashes were beginning to send out 
vines many of them wilted and died, the ground at their bases becom- 
ing wet with their juices, and upon examination it was found that the 
stems of these plants beneath the surface of the ground had been 
completely honey-combed by a white, dipterous larva. In the adjacent 
soil, the eggs, larvae, and puparia of this insect occurred as late as 
July 13, and from some of these puparia the flies issued on the last 
day of July. The eggs were of a pure white color, about 1.25 mm long, 
ribbed lengthwise excepting on one side, which was perfectly smooth; 
they were deposited in clusters between the earth and the stems of the 
plants. 
This same insect was also bred by the writer at Anaheim, Oal., during 
the winter of 1884, from larva? found in the moist soil beneath a wooden 
