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No. 105.] 
indurated that the worm is incapable of making the slightest motion ; 
but on covering them with a wetted cloth, the surface again in a 
short time becomes pliant and yielding; and if pressed with a needle, 
the animal writhes, and sometimes turns itself over to escape from 
the annoyance. I doubt whether it ever moults, or casts off its skin, 
between its egg and its pupa state ; but my observations have not 
been sufficiently exact and prolonged to speak positively upon this 
point. 
This is the form in which the insect passes the autumn and winter. 
The accounts of writers disagree as to where the worm remains 
during this period; in fact few of them speak distinctly upon this 
particular point. Mr. Kirby, however, describes the worm as still 
continuing in the heads of the wheat; but as a considerable portion 
of them are missing, he thinks these have been destroyed by para¬ 
sitic enemies. He says, “ I have seen more than once, seven or 
eight florets in an ear inhabited by the [active] larvae, and as many 
as thirty in a single floret, seldom less than eight or nine, and yet I 
have scarcely found more than one pupa [dormant larva] in an ear, 
and had to examine several to meet with that.” Mr. Gorrie, on the 
other hand, asserts that the maggots quit the ears of the wheat by 
the first of August, and enter into the ground, where they remain 
through the winter. Mr. Shirreff, also, from finding the fly much 
more abundant in fields where wheat had been grown the preceding 
year than it was in other fields, entertains the same opinion. Now 
the truth is, Mr. Kirby and Mr. Gorrie are both right. A portion of 
the larvae leave the grain before it is harvested, and descend to the 
ground, where I have found them, under mouldy fragments of straw 
on the surface, or buried a half inch or less within the soil. I thus 
found them, common in the field already spoken of as examined on 
the 16th of June, a few days after the grain was harvested ; and 
also early in March, in a field in which wheat was grown the pre¬ 
ceding year, that had been somewhat injured by the fly. Another 
portion of these larvae remain in the heads of the wheat, and are 
carried into the barn, where they may readily be observed upon the 
threshing-floor, and found in quantities among the screenings of the 
fanning-mill, a considerable portion of which sometimes consists of 
these worms. Thence our farmers kindly empty them out at the 
door of the barn, where most of them doubtless find among the litter 
