STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
529 
hoped that some one who is conveniently situated for testing the 
efficacy of this measure, will do so, and make the result known 
to the public. 
Burrowing in different parts of the stalks, rendering them dwarfish and often 
causing the heads to perish; small, slender, pale-green and watery-white 
shining maggots. 
The larva: of several small wheat flies and bakley flies of the genera 
Chlorops, (plate 1, fig. 4), and Oscinis (plate 1, fig. 5). 
In Europe it has long been known that among the worst depre¬ 
dators upon the grain crops there, are the larvae of several small 
flies belonging to the genera Chlorops and Oscinis. Some of these 
attack the young plants, and taking their station slightly above 
the root destroy the central stalk. Others burrow in the stalk 
or straw, and others infest the heads. Thus every part of the 
plant finds an enemy in one species and another of this group of 
insects. And so seriously do they injure the crops on which 
they prey, that Linnaeus a century ago computed the loss occa¬ 
sioned by one of them (Chlorops Frit ), which infests the heads of 
barley in Sweden, to amount to nearly half a million of dollars 
annually. 
It has not hitherto been known that the wheat in this country 
was attacked by any insects of this kind. But I have the pre¬ 
sent season discovered these small flies in abundance, in every 
wheat field in my neighborhood. On sweeping with a net any¬ 
where among growing wheat, a multitude of them will be 
gathered. They are of several different kinds and all appear to 
be of species distinct from those described in the works of Mac- 
quart, Zetterstedt, and other European writers to which I am 
able to refer. And upon examining the wheat stalks at different 
times during the season, the larvae of one and another of these 
flies are found therein—smooth, shining, footless little maggots, of 
pale green and watery-white colors, commonly imbedded in the 
straw in small burrows or cylindrical channels which they have 
excavated. 
As these flies appear to be native species, it is probable that 
before wheat was cultivated upon this continent they sustained 
