STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
793 
MIDQK. LARVA. DOES IT CAST OFF ITS 8kIE? 
bedewed with moisture, and how difficult it is for it to move on a 
dry surface, we shall more readily understand its somewhat diver¬ 
sified proceedings from the time it is done feeding in the wheat 
oars until it enters the ground. 
The wheat is for the most part nearly ripe and the ears and 
straw nearly juiceless and dry about the same time that the chief 
portion of the larvas it has nurtured have become mature and 
ready to descend to the earth. But until a rain occurs to wet 
the straw and thus enable them to crawl down it to the ground, 
they are obliged to remain in their retreats within the ears. 
Thus multitudes of them ere they have the opportunity to 
make the descent, dry and shrink and become cased larvae. 
When a rain at length comes on, saturating the wheat ears with 
moisture, these larvae become active, and breaking out from their 
cases, descend to the ground, leaving these transparent whitish 
cases or cast skins within the florets from which they respectively 
came. 
I have heretofore thought that like the larvm of the Willow 
gall fly, these larvae of the wheat midge did not moult or cast 
their skins; and I still ain confident it is only under certain cir¬ 
cumstances that they do this. In repeated instances, on placing 
what appeared to be cased larvae between the folds of wet cloth, 
I have observed them to swell out and fill their cases, which also 
became pliant and supple from the moisture, and then crawl away 
without leaving any traces of these^cast skins behind them. To 
be more fully assured of this fact, I a few days since took 
from a wheat head which has been lying dry within doors upwards 
of three months, six larvae, all showing a transparent space at 
one or both ends of their bodies. I placed them in a row side by 
6ide on a wet cloth, whereby I was sure as one after another 
moved off I Could detect any relics of a cast skin the)' might leave 
behind. In one larva I perceived the end of its case was broken. 
This was the first one to crawl away, leaving its case plainly to 
be seen in the spot where it had laid. Another has gone, leaving 
no vestiges of its case to be found. The remaining four fill 
their skins so perfectly that I think they too will retain them 
when they come to move off. Furthermore, the number of cast 
skins which we find in the wheat heads bears no proportion to 
the number of larvce which have been nurtured in the same heads. 
Some years we may search many heads where the dwarfed kernels 
