54 
dead at the end of even six months. Their vitality is astonishing. 
No extremity of hunger or thirst seems to kill them and water does 
not drown them. They are perfectly amphibious. 
INJURIES TO GRAIN. 
This insect effects its injury by sucking the milky juice from the 
young kernel, without any apparent gnawing of the surface, thus 
causing the grain to shrivel and blight, the heads remaining sub¬ 
stantially unfilled. Not unfrequently the crop is. utterly ruined, and 
the loss "in whole states, like New York and Ohio, has occasionally 
reached a total of two-thirds or three-fourths the entire average 
yield. 
* 
REMEDIES. 
No application of remedial or preventive measures has hitherto 
arrested the ravages of the midge, although it is not impossi¬ 
ble that they have somewhat mitigated the gravity of its attack. 
The only ones hitherto suggested which even promise usefulness are 
those of destroying the screenings of the mill when the wheat is 
threshed and cleaned immediately after harvest; or, for the pur¬ 
pose of getting rid of the midge larvae remaining on the grain, that 
of deep plowing of the old fields of wheat with the hope that the 
larvae remaining in the ground may thus be buried beyond the hope 
of resurrection, when their transformations are completed the follow¬ 
ing year. 
Besides these, we have the heroic remedy of refraining from the 
cultivation of wheat where the success of the crop is threatened by 
the previous appearance of the midge,—doubtless the most effective 
measure provided it be generally adopted. 
5. The Wheat Bulb Worm. 
(.Meromyza americana, Fitch.) 
Order Diptera. Family Oscinid.®. 
(Plate IV. Figs. 4-9.) 
Since the outbreak of this insect in Fulton county, described in 
my report for last year, it seems to have entirely disappeared ironi 
that locality, not a single field, this year, having given the slightest 
evidence of its presence; a fact doubtless due to the destruction 
effected by the parasite described by me in the article above men¬ 
tioned. 
Indeed, in all our observations and collections, made in different 
parts of the State during the past season, no evidence was seen o 
anything more than trivial injury by this insect until late in Octo er, 
when Mr. N. S. King, of Normal, called my attention to a field oi 
rye which had been mysteriously checked in its growth and seeme 
likely to be entirely ruined. An examination of this field made o 
