205 
“In an article in a Saint Louis paper I described, last June, the 
process of oviposition on the leaves, and my own observations in 
Missouri accord entirely with those of E. Tilghman recorded m 
1820 and E. C. Herrick in 1844, and quoted by Fitch m his essay 
on the Hessian-flv (Albany, 1846), with the exception that they clo 
not mention the exceptional habit of pushing the eggs between the 
sheath and the stalk, owing doubtless to the fact that their observa¬ 
tions were made solely on the autumn brood of flies o^ lpositmg on 
the young plants, the' habit being more common in the early summer 
brood when the plants are larger.” 
Mr. William Strong, of Kalamazoo county, Michigan, thus describes 
the process, adding some particulars of interest: 
‘“I have seen the wheat plant with many of the maggots at work 
before there was any stalk for the fly to lay its eggs on, by intro¬ 
ducing the extensile abdominal tip under the leaf sheath. Even 
this fall I have seen this very thing when there was as yet but one 
shoot from the kernel having but three leaves, the wheat having 
been sowed not more than three weeks. I have seen these maggots 
when too small to be seen without the aid of a glass, so low down 
toward the kernel, which was sowed with a drill, that if the ny had 
deposited the eggs under the leaf on the stalk, if there had been 
one there, she would have been obliged to use a spade to dig to get 
a chance. I am not the only one who believes that the egg is laid 
on the leaf and hatches there, when the small maggot works its way 
down inside of the leaf as low as possible. If there should be fif¬ 
teen or twenty on one leaf (not a large number to find the past 
year under one leaf), of course as they took their place they would 
be somewhat in rows, but they, of course, are not the ‘eggs placed 
in the longitudinal grooves of the stalk. 
“In Solon Robinson’s ‘Facts for Farmers,’ page 214, we read: 
‘The female deposits her eggs soon after the wheat begins to grow, 
* * * in the cavities between the little ridges of the blades. 
In from four to fifteen days the eggs hatch and the diminutive 
maggots work dow T n into the leaf sheath and there spend the winter. 
In the Kalamazoo Telegraph for November 7, this year, are a few lines 
upon the Hessian-fly by M. B. Batcham, of Ohio. He is too well known 
to need an introduction at this time. He says: ‘In the spring, with 
the first warm weather, the fly will come forth and deposit its eggs 
upon the leaf, which will then soon hatch, when the worms, ciawlmg 
down the leaf, feed upon the stalk, injuring its growth, often causing 
it to die.’ A reason given by some why the fly does not injure red 
wheat as much as white is because the leaf of the red grows so 
long and slants down from the shoot so that when the egg hatches 
the maggot works down the wrong way, falls to the ground, and so 
many fail to harm the wheat. ’ 
A writer in the Country Gentleman, Mr Caleb S. Fullei, of Jackson 
county, Michigan, says: 
“The fly commences as soon as the wheat is up an inch high. I 
placed in a glass fruit jar some stools of wheat which was sown on 
the 81st of August, and about the 15th of October the fly hatched 
out of the brown eggs [puparia] which were in the wheat m large 
