778 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
litpaK. FLY• DAS IT A HAIB-LIKE STIES t 
my violence that she discontinued her employment, and flew 
away.” 
Mr. Shirriff, in an “Account of the Wheat*fly ” published in 
Loudon’s Magazine of Natural History, vol. ii, pp. 448-451, also 
describes the ovipositor or tube through which the eggs are 
passed, as being “ of considerable length, perhaps four times that 
of the body, and so minute, that it appears doubtful whether the 
eggs pass along the interior or exterior surface. It can be ex¬ 
tended or withdrawn at pleasure, and is seldom visible unless the 
fly is depositing its eggs.” 
These statements gave mo a very erroneous idea of the ovi¬ 
positor of this midge, as being a long fine bristle, like that of an 
Ichueumon fly, and employed in the same manner, to “pierce” as 
Mr. Kirby terms it, the chaff of the wheat, in order to introduce 
the eggs into the interior of the flower. Accordingly, when in 
the evening, by the light of a lantern, I saw these flies standing 
upon the back or outer surface of the chaff, with the tip of the 
abdomen fastened to the surface, and eggs evidently passing 
through it, I had no thought but that a hair-like sting was 
pierced through the chaff, conducting these eggs into the interior 
of the flower. I accordingly represented it to be thus. I also 
noticed then, as at many times since, small discolored points on 
the chaff of the green wheat, which I inferred to bo wounds re¬ 
maining where the sting of the midge had been inserted. And 
when I came to see the figure of Mr. Curtis, from which our fig. 
15 plate ii was copied, the existence of this hair-like sting ap¬ 
peared to be placed beyond all doubt. 
I had often thought of it however, as being a remarkable 
anomaly, that in two insects so closely related as tho wheat 
midge and Hessian fly, one should take such particular and toil¬ 
some care to place its eggs in tho very situation where its young 
are to feed, whilst the other merely drops them on the leaves, 
necessitating its young to crawl quite a distance thence to reach 
the place where it is to nourish itself. 
But that the views which were universally entertainod on this 
subject were correct, I entertained not a particle of double, until 
recently. On a cloudy day, happening to observe a midge 
depositing its eggs in a wheat ear, I was not a little astonished 
to observe that by the place and position in which it stood, its 
eggs could not pass into the interior of the flower. And glanc- 
