602 Qaarterly Beport of the Consulting Entomologist. 
small greyish two-winged fly, which sometimes causes much 
injury to the wheat-crop by means of its maggots feeding on the 
bulb of the young plant. It is mentioned by J\lr. Creese, of Ted- 
dington, that the attack is observable early in March, or in mild 
seasons about the middle of February, at which time the maggot 
is so small as to be hardly perceptible ; its place of feeding is 
just at the base of the stem, where it remains a short time, and 
then moves off to another plant, the injured plant sometimes 
decaying at the heart of the bulb. 
The maggots are legless, whitish, and much like those of the 
blue-bottle fly in appearance. When full grown they are upwards 
of a quarter of an inch in length. The chrysalids or fly-cases 
are chestnut-brown. The female flies are pale grey, the males 
have the body between the wings grey, but lighter at the sides, 
with a faint stripe along the centre, and the abdomen, which 
is long, narrow, and flat, is ashy, with a faint line along the 
back.* 
With regard to habits and amount of injury, it is mentioned 
by jNIr. Creese that the wheat-bulb maggot is entirely absent 
some seasons, but is very destructive in about three years out 
of four ; that it attacks plants on land that has been fallowed 
in the previous summer, but does not ever appear on land 
which has been ploughed for the first time in the autumn, also 
that it always leaves a belt of five or six yards near the hedge 
untouched. The damage is sometimes so complete as not to 
leave a healthy plant in a yard ; and in 1881 the destruction he 
records by wheat-grub was at the rate of 15 bushels the acre in 
50 acres of fallow wheat. 
Injury apparently of a similar kind has been reported to me 
from various localities for several years, but the cause was not 
made out. In this case larv.T? were placed in the hands of 
Mr. R. H. Meade, who reared and identified them ; also, as he 
had doubts of the cabbage-root flies, which did much damage by 
their maggots to the crops in Scotland last year, being rightly 
considered the Anthomyia brassicce or A. radicum (regarding the 
precise naming of which there is a good deal of difficulty), 
specimens of cabbage-root-eating maggots were recently lor- 
warded to him, which in due course proved to be of the 
Anthomyia floralis, a fly very similar to A. brassica; in appear- 
ance. During last year it was found that applications of lime, 
and of gas-lime, and also of ammoniacal liquor, were useful in 
case of attack ; and in experiments as to the effects of manures 
published in the ' Transactions of the Zoological and Botanical 
Society of Vienna,' it is mentioned that whilst land manured 
* For full description see list of Brit. Antliomyiidx, 16 HyUmyiu, by R. H. 
Meade. ' Entomologist's Monthly Mag.,' 1S82. 
