328 Reports of the Honorary Consulting Entomologist. 
been favoured with information that the treatment was suc- 
cessful. 
The numerous inquiries which have been sent in during the 
year show that the interest taken in the subject of prevention of 
crop attack has much increased amongst members of the Society, 
and generally amongst agriculturists and growers at home and 
in the colonies. 
February, 1884. 
1 beg to submit that since my Report of November, 1883, I 
have received communications on the following subjects : — 
Specimens of seed-heads of Alopecuriis pratensis, " Meadow 
Foxtail " grass, have been forwarded, with inquiries whether a 
small orange-coloured legless maggot by which they were much 
infested was that of the Cccidomyia tritici, or common wheat- 
midge — often known as " red maggot." 
After careful examination, the maggot proved to be that of a 
Cccidomyia, though certainly not of C. tritici. It is clearly dis- 
tinguishable by having a minute forked process, furnished witli 
blunt points (but not crescent-shaped), beneath the body near 
the head. 
The agricultural seedsman by whom the specimens were for- 
warded stated that the imported heads of A. pratensis, harvested 
in 1882, contained about 25 per cent, infested by maggots ; 
those of 1883, about 5 per cent. This refers to seed harvested 
in Germany and Russia. 
More recently a bunch of seeds collected in the neighbour- 
hood of Chester was examined, and found to be much infested. 
The subject of the presence of these " red maggots " in the 
" meadow foxtail " heads will receive full attention, as, besides 
the loss on seed of this grass, it is very likely indeed that, 
though not the common " red maggot," it may be also present 
in wheat. I shall, therefore, endeavour to rear the larva, or 
procure it to be reared, through all its stages, and report further 
as to the species of Cccidomyia, or "gnat-midge," to which it 
turns. 
The only method which is mentioned as being ])ractised at 
present to prevent attack on the foxtail-grass, is that of gathering 
the earliest ripened heads for seed. These are free from maggot, 
because the young embryo of the seed has passed its first soft 
state (in which only it can serve for food to this kind of maggot) 
before the grass " gnat-midges " had ccme out to lay in the 
blossom-heads. 
As these gnat-midges probably go through their changes to 
the midge-state at the root of the grasses from which the maggot 
fell down when full fed, and the midges fly up from thence to 
