STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
489 
ONION-FLY. WORK OF THE MASCOT. 
seed has been thickly sown, and the young plants are crowded 
together, they are successively cut down, one after another, until 
a wide vacancy is produced in the row, all vestiges of the plants 
being gone, except on one or both sides, where is usually, first, a 
plant dead and turned yellow, lying flat upon the ground, the 
maggots having consumed its root and passed on to one or two of 
the next plants, which are wilted and drooping, and of a flaccid 
feeling, but still of a natural green color, and in the roots of these 
the young worms are nestled and feeding. And if these wilted 
plants be not disinterred, and the worms in their roots killed, the}'' 
will next daj^ have passed onward, destroying the next plants, and 
the next, until the whole row, it may be, will be cut down before 
the worms have got their growth and are finished feeding. 
The first indication which we have that our onion bed is invaded 
by this enemy, we discover that two or three of the young plants 
are wilted down and lying on the surface of the ground, perhaps 
changed to a yellow color, and the plant next in the row to those 
prostrate ones probably has its lower or outer leaf similarly 
wilted and prostrate, although it is green and shows no wound or 
other indication of disease, and the other leaves of this plant are 
erect, and to the eyo appear perfectly healthy; but on feeling 
them we find they are soft and flaccid, not firm and substantial like 
those of the unaffected plants. Thus by the feeling of the leaves 
we readily detect those plants which have worms in their roots. 
On carefully digging up and examining the affected plant, if it 
is young and the root small and cylindrical, we commonly find it 
completely cut assuuder as represented in Fig. 
1, only the thin outer skin remaining, whereby 
the slightest pulling upon the top draws it 
up out of the ground. Later in the season, 
when the round bulb is beginning to be 
formed, as in Fig. 2, we find a hole perforated 
in its side, opening into a cavity in the inte¬ 
rior, and the earth around this perforation is 
wet and slimy, forming a mass of filthy mud 
in which those worms are lying which are not 
engaged in feeding. And by this interior 
cavity the central leaves of the plant arc sev- 
Fig. 1. » . . ^ 
Voting onion out asunder. el-ed from their connection with the fibrous 
