INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 139 



appropriate food of another species of Calandra^ which I 

 found abundant in it. " 



Hye, in this island, is an article of less importance than 

 wheat ; but in some parts of the Continent it forms a prin- 

 cipal portion of the bread-corn. Providence has also ap- 

 pointed 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 {Margaritia 

 secalis), which eats the culm of this plant within the vagina, 

 thus destroys many ears. In common with wheat and barley, 

 it also suflers from Leeuwenhoek's wolf and the weevil, when 

 stored in granaries. 



Barley likewise, another of our most valuable grains, has 

 several insect foes, besides the beetle (Zabrus gihbus), already 

 alluded to (p. 134.). The gelatinous larva of a saw-fly {Ten- 

 thredo L.) preys upon the upper surface of the leaves, and 

 so occasions them to wither. Musca hordei of Bierkander 

 also assails the plant. A tenth part of the produce of this 

 grain, Linne aflfirms, 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 like- 

 wise O. lineata F. Dr. J. N. Sauter has described a fly 

 which he calls Tipula cerealis (most probably a species of 

 Cecidomyia), the larvae 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 Beaumur, though not named by Linne, 

 which may be called Tinea hordei {Ypsoloplius granellusT), 



1 Curculio testaceus, Ent. Brit. 



2 Marsham in Linn. Trans, il. 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. Land. Oct. 5, 1840. 



5 Kollar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. 124. 



