SIXTH REPORT 
ON THE 
NOXIOUS AND OTHER INSECTS 
OF THE 
STATE OF NEW YORK. 
By ASA FITCH, M. D. 
ENTOMOLOGIST OF THE NEW YORK STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Copy-right Secured to the Author. 
INSECTS INFESTING GRAIN CROPS. 
For the most part the same insects are common to the several 
cereals, wheat, barley, rye and oats. Wheat as being the most 
delicate and nutritious of these grains suffers most severely from 
the attacks of these enemies. Rye being the most hardy and 
rapid in its growth escapes with the least injury. After treating 
upon the insects infesting the wheat crop, therefore we shall find 
very few species remaining to be Separately considered as belong¬ 
ing exclusively to the other grain crops mentioned. 
1. WHEAT .—Triticum vulgare. 
1. Wheat midge, Cecidomyia Tritici, Kirby. (Diptora, Tipulidas.) Plate ii, fig. 1, 4. 
Minute orange yellow maggots lying inside of the chaff upon 
the surface of the young kernels, causing them to be dwarfish 
and shrunken when ripe; these maggots descending into the 
ground and forming very minute cocoons, from which in the fol¬ 
lowing June come bright orange colored flies or midges 0.10 long 
with clear glass-like wings. 
Among the insects infesting our grain crops the Wheat midge 
is entitled to take precedence. It has in this country and in 
our own day fully vindicated its claim to the character assigned 
it upon another continent nearly a century ago — “These little 
insects are the wheat crop’s greatest enemy.” The experience 
which the generation which is now passing off the world’s stago 
has had with this insect, has been such that every tiller of the 
