STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
785 
MIDGE. PLY. EGGS AND LARVA FOUND ON THE ANTHERS. 
no spiders or other enemies will be apt to find them to destroy 
them, and where they will bo sheltered from the sun arid air 
which would dry and shrivel them before they have time to hatch. 
Looking at the shape of the ovipositor, fig. 16, and knowing its 
substance to be soft and flaccid, it is evident it can only enter 
some open crevice; it has not firmness and solidity whereby it 
can be crowded between the edges of the chaffs where these 
edges are closed and pressed together. And therefore when the 
midge first comes abroad, which is some few days before the fall 
sowed wheat begins to bloom, the flowers are so closed that it 
cannot insert its eggs into their interior. But finding the little 
orifice above mentioned, at the summit of the outermost chaff, it 
crowds its ovipositor into it and there places its eggs. And it 
continues to place them here, as long as it has eggs to deposit. 
It also places them between the florets, and in short, in any nar¬ 
row crevice upon the headlets which it is able to discover. And 
thus, when the flowers swell preparatory to putting out their 
thread-like stamens, the bearded and inner chaffs become parted 
asunder at their summit, whereupon the midge commences insert¬ 
ing its eggs between them also. But this is probably the most 
insecure situation of any in which it places its eggs. For as the 
anthers grow and push themselves out from between these two 
chaff's they frequently displace and carry out those eggs with 
them. It is thus that I account for the occurrence of the eggs 
upon the anthers, the little yellow knobs which hang by slender 
threads from the wheat ears when they are in bloom. I have 
sometimes noticed eggs adhering to the anthers, and Mr. Kirby 
met with newly hatched larvae upon them, from whence he con¬ 
cluded that the pollen or fine dust which is scattered from the 
anthers was the food on which these larvae subsist. But in our 
view their presence in this situation is merely accidental, and 
occasioned in the manner stated. And the eggs thus exposed to 
the air probably become dried and shrink up as they do when 
they are dropped on the sides of vials in which the flies are im¬ 
prisoned ; or if they are ready to hatch when they become thus 
exposed, it is very doubtful whether the young larvae from them, 
swinging about as the anthers do with every breath of the wind, 
are able to find their way back into the interior of the flowers. 
J lie last joint of the ovipositor is wholly inserted into the 
crevice where the eggs are placed, and is thus hid from the view, 
[Ag. Trans.] 30 
