STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
841 
JOINT-WORM FLY. HA HITS. REMEDY. BLACK-LEGQED BARLEY FLY. 
species than in others, the Eurytoma Hordei presenting the gen¬ 
eric characters more perfectly than either of the three other 
species. 
The joint worm remains in its cell in its larva state through 
the winter, and changes to a pupa with the first warm days of 
spring. Its final transformation takes place and the flies come 
out from the straw during the first half of May. With their 
stings they pierce the green stalks of the grain and insert their 
eggs therein, one in a place, usually just above the lower joints, 
and from these eggs come the worms which are afterwards found 
there upon dissecting the straw. But if this fly is really a para¬ 
site, it will be found that a worm is lying in the straw at each 
point where it inserts its sting, into which worm the egg is thrust. 
By watching one of these flies therefore, when it is thus occupied, 
its true character may readily be ascertained. 
As the joint-worm lies in the straw through the autumn and 
winter, it will be obvious to every person that the most feasible 
mode of combatting and destroying it is to burn the straw con¬ 
taining it. 
9. Black-legged barley-fly, Eurytoma Hordei, Harris. (Hymcnoptera, Chalcididae.) 
In barley, particular stalks stunted and backward in their growth and of a yellow, sickly 
appearance, these stalks having a hard woody swelling at one of tho lower joints, tho surface 
of which shows little oval glossy elevations like blisters, within which is a cavity in which a 
soft straw-colored maggot lies, which remains in tho ripened straw till the latter part of the 
following May, when it gnaws a hole in the straw and comes out, a shining black fly resem¬ 
bling a small ant 0.12 long and having obscure yellowish knees and feet. 
In connection with the joint-worm fly which has been con¬ 
sidered in the preceding pages, may most appropriately be given 
an account of the three other insects which have been mentioned 
as being most intimately related to it both in their appearance 
and habits, although they attack other kinds of grain. And the 
same figure 1 of plate 1 which represents the female ol one of 
these species serves equally well to illustrate the others, they 
aro so much alike in every respect except the colors of their legs. 
We will proceed first to consider the species which has been 
known the longest time, the Black-legged or Massachusetts bar- 
ley-fiy. 
It is upwards of thirty years ago that an insect malady pre¬ 
vailed in the growing barley in the north-eastern section ot Mas¬ 
sachusetts, whereby only a small crop of this grain could be 
