The recent appearance of the Hessian Fly. 
mentioning that insect-injured straw of this nature was ex- 
ceptionally common in Scotland this year, and that the attack 
had been observed in various counties widely apart, and was 
causing considerable havoc to crops and anxiety to farmers. 
In regard to the insect cause of this evil, I have been able to 
examine it in all its stages from the maggot taken out of the 
newly formed chrysalis cases up to the perfect gnat midge 
developed from the " flax-seed "-like chrysalids in my possession. 
The maggot (that is, technically, the larva), as dissected out 
of the pupa case, whilst still but little, if at all, altered from its 
original condition, was legless, and milky white, with a line of 
slightly darker tint down the middle, and also across the 
divisions of the segments ; it was oval in shape ; about the 
eighth of an inch long : the head, as matter of course, was not 
visible ; but underneath the maggot, near the head end, I found 
a well-developed "anchor process " — a kind of horny blunt fork or 
scraper, with which maggots of this nature are furnished, the form 
of which aids in distinguishing the species. I found this process 
to be decidedly different in form to that of our British wheat 
midge, the Cecidomyia tritici, being much more forked in shape. 
Fig. 3. — Hessian Fly in its Stages of (1) Gnat, (2) Maggot, and 
(3) Pupa or " Flax-seed" all magnified. 
Ihe catuia'. sii.es arc rhuwa by liLe - near each figure. 
The first gnat midge, that is to say the " Hessian Fly," the 
Cecidomyia destructor, was found developed from my pupae on 
the 8th of September, this being as nearly as may be six weeks 
from the first observation of these " flax-seed " pup^. 
To the unassisted eye it appeared as a small stout-made 
brown gnat, darker in the head and fore-body, somewhat lighter 
in the colour of the legs, with one pair of smoky grey wings 
fringed at the edge, long fine horns, and it was precisely one- 
eighth of an inch in length (see Fig. 31). 
