THE OSCINIANS. 
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legs ; the wings are broad, rounded at the tip, and clouded 
with brown in large spots, forming three wide, irregular 
bands across them. 
Many of the smallest flies, belonging to several other 
groups, are placed near the end of the order. One of them 
has a head like a hammer-headed shark, short and very 
wide, with large globular eyes on each side of it. This little 
insect has been found in considerable numbers, flying near 
the ground, on the edges of banks. It is the Sphyracephala 
brevicornis of Mr. Say, and is figured and described in the 
third volume of his “ American Entomology.” The well- 
known cheese-maggots are the young of a fly ( Piopliila 
casei), not more than three twentieths of an inch long, of a 
shining black color, with the middle and hinder legs mostly 
yellowish, and the wings transparent like glass. 
Some minute flies, belonging to a family called Oscinid.e, 
are found to be very injurious to wheat, rye, and barley, in 
Europe. One of them ( Oscinis frit), a shining black fly, 
with yellowish feet, and measuring about one tenth of an 
inch in length, lays its eggs in the blossoms of barley, the 
grains of which afterwards perish in consequence of the 
depredations of the maggots of this fly ; and Linnaeus states 
that a tenth part of the produce of the barley in Sweden is 
thereby annually destroyed. The larvae or maggots of Os- 
cinis lineata, Chlorops pumilionis, Chlorops glabra, and other 
flies allied to them, live within the lower part of the stems 
of wheat, rye, and barley, thereby impoverishing the plants, 
and causing them to become stinted in their growth. They 
are rather larger insects than the frit-fly, and have black and 
yellow stripes on the thorax. 
It is highly probable that some of these species, or other 
Oscinians, with similar habits, may be found in the stems 
of wheat and other grains in this country, and perhaps also 
in the ears. Several kinds of small flies, evidently different 
from the Hessian and wheat flies, have often been observed 
here, in fields of grain, when the plants are in flower ; but 
