WHEAT-BULB FLY. 
51 
On May 28tli Mr. Searley furnished me with the details of tillage 
and succession of crops on the infested ground as follows :—“ I have 
seen other summer fallow wheats fail this spring, but none of my 
neighbours have seen the grub. I will give the main tillage operations 
in field attacked. 
“1884.—Wheat a good crop, hut weedy; many common thistles. 
Ploughed in winter six inches. 
“ 1885.—May, ploughed back. 
“ July, again ploughed and thoroughly dragged and harrowed to 
kill twitch. Left rough. 
“ August 4th and following days manured with well-trodden straw 
from bullocks eating cake in previous winter. 
“ Aug. 8th, ploughed and rolled. 
“Aug. 10th, rolled and drilled with white mustard and 2 cwts. of 
mineral phosphate and bone-meal. Land was so dry that mustard did 
not come up until late in September. Little eatage (kept 100 sheep a 
fortnight on six acres). 
Nov. 9th and 10th, ploughed and drilled with eight pecks of Main 
Stand-up White Wheat; seed not affected by this grub in previous 
year. 
“ 1886.—Polled in March ; Wheat looking well for a sharp winter, 
—in fact, as well as rest of the farm. Wheat began to fail about 
April 10th. Grub not found until sent to you. 
“ Eemaining eight acres of field tilled in same way in 1885, but 
sown with rape, which also failed, is not at all affected by grub. 
“ May 26th, many bare spots in Wheat, some roots which did seem 
dead sending up shoots after rain. Grub cannot be found.” 
The attacks above mentioned appear to be of just the same kind as 
those reported in 1881 and 1882,^' but the only thing which seems 
clear as to any preceding points is that they usually occur after 
summer fallow, or after Swedes of which the crop has failed. In the 
report given above by Mr. Searley attack in one case was worst on 
land where there had been an unsatisfactory crop of Mustard eaten off 
by sheep. 
In the instance in which the fly was reared from infested plants 
(in 1882) it proved to be a little greyish fly, somewhat like the Onion 
Fly in general appearance ; and the following is its winter life-history, 
as given by Dr. E. L. Taschenberg from observations on attacked 
Eye injured by the two-winged fly, Hyleynia coarctata : — 
“ I have only observed its method of life in the winter brood, for 
which the females laid their eggs in autumn in the winter-sown plant 
—in the last days of March I found the maggots in the heart of the 
* See ‘ Eeports on Injurious Insects for 1881,’ pp. 18-20, and for 1882, 
pp. 20, 21, by Eleanor A. Ornierod. 
