61 
N T o. 
Date. 
Eggs. 
Larva?. 
Puparia. 
Imagos. 
Brood. 
"TO 
22 
23 
24 
25 
27 
29 
2 
72 
22.57 
2.3.4 
( - 
7Q 
22,57 
2.3 
74 
22 
2 
22 
2 
76 
77 
22 
2 
22 
2 
78 
7Q 
Oct. 
71 
2 or 3 
9 
68 
2 or 3 
SO 
10 
12 
18 
20 
22 
22 
27 
29 
12 
30 
68 
2 or 3 
81 
82 
83 
84 
85 
86 
1886 
si 
4 
si 
81 
4.1 
69.72,77 
4.3.3 
83 
3 
7i 
2 or 3 
68 
2 or 3 
7i 
88 
71 
3or4.1 
88 
89 
Nov. 
( 4 
1888 
88 
3 or 4.1 
72 
3.4 
Experiments with Grasses. —The interesting and very impor¬ 
tant question, Can the Hessian fly under any circumstances 
breed in any other grasses than wheat, barley, and rye, has 
never yet been fully and authoritatively settled; but evidence of 
the occasional occurrence in midsummer of the fly in various 
grasses, tame and wild, is beginning to accumulate. 
It was reported in England in 1887" that larvae of the Hes¬ 
sian fly occurred very rarely in Holcus lanatus (velvet grass), a 
grass, however, which has been recorded but once from Illinois;! 
and in 1886 Dr. K. Lindeman, of Moscow, asserted the occur¬ 
rence in Eussia of this insect in the flaxseed state in two other 
species of grass; viz., common timothy ( Phleum pratense), and 
quick-grass ( Triticum repens),t —both, I need not say, common 
grasses of this region. 
In 1889 Mr. Albert Koebele, Field Agent of the United States 
Entomologist, reported from California§ the occurrence of the 
Hessian fly (the puparia) on two species of grass, Elymus 
americanus and a species of Agrostis, and says also that the 
preceding summer “Specimens and traces of such were found in 
the Santa Cruz Mountains upon several species of grass.’* * * § 
These California observations seem to me, however, to require 
verification. 
The importance of this subject as bearing upon midsummer 
measures for the destruction of the fly is such that careful ex¬ 
periments were begun last year to determine whether wild 
grasses or those commonly cultivated in Illinois, or likely to 
be cultivated, were capable of becoming infested by this insect. 
For example, June 2, an experimental breeding cage similar to 
those described above was stocked with timothy sod transferred 
from the field, and in this cage flaxseeds of the Hessian fly were 
introduced in large numbers, taken from a lot obtained May 
* Ch. Whitehead and Gray, Report of the Commissioners appointed by the Government 
to inquire into the present visitation of the Hessian lly T on corn crops in Great Britain, p. t. 
+ Patterson’s Cat. Phenogamous and Vascular Cryptogamous Plants of Ill., 1S7(», p. 52, 
“Moist mea ows, Adams Co. Mead.” 
t Entomologische Nachrichien, vol. xiv (1888), p. 243. 
§ “Insect Life,” vol. ii (1890), p, 252. 
