850 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
RYE-FLY. ITS DISTINCTIVE MARKS. 
ley, produced by the two insects which have last been considered 
and with that in wheat caused by the joint-worm. In these sam¬ 
ples of the straw the cells in which the larvae were contained 
were situated in the walls of the central stalk, not in the sheath 
surrounding it. And the flies though closely akin to those of the 
barley and wheat were not identical with either of those species 
They were most nearly like those of the joint-worm fly, from 
which they were observed to differ in every instance, in having 
the hind pair of shanks dull pale yellow, as well as the forward 
ones. An article was hereupon communicated and published in 
the American Agriculturist, August 1861, (vol. xx., p. 235,) in 
which 1 described this species under the name of Eurytoma Secalis 
or the Rye-fly. 
As the disease which this insect causes in the rye is in every 
particular like that in barley and wheat which has been so fully 
described in the preceding pages, and the insect itself differs so 
little from the foregoing ones, any extended account of it and its 
operations is unnecessary. I therefore have only to add that this 
rye fly is very slightly smaller than the other species, the female 
in different examples measuring 0.10 and 0.11 in length, and the 
male is scarcely if at all inferior in size to the other sex. The 
hind shanks are slightly dusky and less bright than the forward 
ones, but are manifestly paler than the middle ones. An obscure 
brown dot or lunule is faintly perceptible on each side of the 
neck. The male, in the structure of his antennae, the form of his 
abdomen, &c., corresponds with the description alreadj’' given of 
the yellow-legged barley-fly. 
Alfei giving these lour Chalcidian insects, which come from 
larvae lying in closed cells in different kinds of grain, such a par- 
ticulai review as I have done in preparing this account of them, 
I ought not to dismiss the subject without remarking that I do 
not in the least doubt that they are the real cause of the disease 
which we see in the grain. Were they parasites, so very nume¬ 
rous as they have been in the straw in particular instances, I 
cannot but think this disease in the straw would have ceased, 
instead o 1 continuing on as it has done, year after year, with no 
material abatement. And further, were they parasites, I cannot 
but think that in some of the many instances in which I have 
bred these insects, I should have obtained their foster parent, or 
should at least have noticed some remaining vestiges of it, or 
