STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
809 
MIDOE. PARASITES. THE LARVA PARASITE. 
although it can be found almost every year in our wheat fields, 
showing it is still with us, everywhere ready to again increase 
and become destructive, were it not constantly repressed and 
kept down by its parasitic foes. And as illustrating the efficiency 
of these parasites on the wheat midge, it has been stated that 
persons who have been desirous of seeing and obtaining speci¬ 
mens of the midge, on repairing to places where it had been 
plenty have been unable to find it, nothing but swarms of these 
parasitic destroyers coming out in the wheat fields in its stead. Mr. 
Curtis remarks, these parasites so effectually execute their mis¬ 
sion, that it has often happened, a year or two after the midges 
were in excess, not a specimen could be found. And being usu¬ 
ally present upon the wheat in so much greater abundance than 
the midge fly, it is often overlooked, and these black flies it is 
hence supposed must be the parents of the yellow maggots which 
occur in the ears. Thus Mr. Kirby remarks, it is singular, but 
most people who are acquainted with the larva of the midge mis¬ 
take these friendly parasites for its parent, and thus impute all 
the mischief to the very creature which is appointed to prevent 
it. Even in our own times this same mistake continues to occur, 
as we are made aware by a writer in Loudon’s Magazine of Nat¬ 
ural History (vol. ii, p. 292), who, after describing the appear¬ 
ance of the yellow larvae in the wheat ears, goes on to state that 
they become transformed into small black flies which appear in 
myriads on the outside of the ears and are not half the size of 
the yellow fly figured by Mr. Kirby; though in a subsequent 
communication (p. 323) he corrects his error, on coming to find 
that the yellow flies which he had not seen before also occurred 
on the wheat. / 
In England Mr. Kirby found three of these parasitic insects 
which he was sufficiently assured were destroyers of the wheat 
midge. That which he first noticed as being the most abundant, 
and which is regarded as the most important and useful, is the 
midge larva parasite, named Ichneumon Tipulce , by Mr. Kirby. 
It now pertains to the genus Platygaster in the family Proctotru- 
pidee and order Hymenoptera. It is black and shining ; its anten¬ 
nas (see plate i, fig. 4, &,) are pale dull yellow and nearly as long 
as the body, becoming thicker towards their tips, composed of 
ten joints, of which the fifth and sixth are minute ; its scutel is 
prolonged into a conspicuous conical spine of a rusty yellow 
