Jane 2, 1891. 
395 
From Southminster, iu Essex, the attack was reported as worse 
than ever this year, many of the wheats being so bad that they had 
to be ploughed up in some cases, and patched with oats in many 
others ; and another note from Essex about tlie beginning of May 
mentioned that what had been a full plant in the held attacked a 
month before had then wasted down 50 per cent, in the infested 
part, and was still going. From near Tewkesbury (to take a return 
from the other side of the country) a correspondent who has 
watched the attack for many years writes me that he does not ever 
remember it so extensive as it is this season, and that he estimated 
the loss on the clay-land fallow wheat at nearly one-half. Reports 
from other localities also confirm these observations, and those of 
previous years, regarding the great loss caused by the maggot in the 
young wheat plant. 
This attack appears to be steadily becoming more prevalent. It 
was first regularly reported as a crop pest (though obviously present 
before) iu 1881, and in 1882 I reared the fiy, so that we were able 
to identify the infestation, but no further special notice of it 
occurred until 1886. Since then we have had it in 1888-89-90, 
and now again this year, and the attacks of 1888 and the present 
season have both been bad. 
The injury, as previously mentioned, is caused by a small maggot, 
which feeds in the heart of the young wheat. This may be observed 
beginning to affect the plant by the first days of April, or earlier. 
The maggots change to the chrysalis state in or by the destroyed 
shoots in May, or early in June, and the fly comes out, in this 
country, as far as I have seen at present, at the end of June, or the 
beginning of J uly. It is a little black and grey two-winged fly, not 
at all unlike the common onion fly. 
Tlie reports given this season confirm the previous observations, 
that the attack is mainly or often found after fallow, or on fields, 
or portions of fields, where the surface has been exposed during the 
preceding summer, as where patches of turnips have failed, potato 
leafage been thin over the ground, or the crop dug early ; or, again, 
where clover has failed ; and a special observation was sent of 
where oat crop was cut very close to the ground (during a spell of 
hot weather last summer), the infestation of the bulb maggot after- 
wards following the line to which the close crop extended almost to 
an inch. 
The infestation may occur after many kinds of crops, but from 
collation of the great number of observations which have been sent 
me, it appears to me that its presence is very much influenced by 
the state of the surface of the land, and likewise by the method and 
date of the mechanical operations of cultivation of the surface of the 
land, respectively in the summer, before or the time immediately 
before the date of sowing. 
Observations have been sent of the headlands not being attacked, 
even to the difierence showing as of a framing like that of a picture 
of the vigorous wheat round the attacked crop. In one instance it 
was noted that the saved headlands had been worked hard by the 
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