FRIT FLY. 
11 
the tail, and otherwise resembling the description given above, which 
developed to an Oscinis, either frit or indistinguishable from it. The 
damage in this instance was very severe, estimated by the owner at 
fifteen bushels per acre on nearly fifty acres of fallow wheat. 
The exact nature (that is, the precise cause) of the above kind of 
injury to the young corn has been difficult to make out, as in the 
instances reported, though the mischief was much the same in all 
cases, it was plain there were two kinds of maggots present, turning 
to two quite distinct kinds of flies. One of these I have described 
above; the other, as I mentioned at length in my Tenth Report, was 
of a very differently-shaped maggot, small at the head-end and truncate 
at the tail, and turned to a small greyish two-winged fly (the Hylemia 
coarctata). Both of the above attacks appear so similarly destructive 
that at the present I do not see much to distinguish them by, as far as 
the plant is concerned, excepting that it appears that the maggot of 
the O.frit goes into chrysalis in the attacked plant, and the maggot of 
the H. coarctata is considered, either usually or in some instances, to 
leave the plant andfgo into chrysalis in the ground. 
With regard to prevention, we do not seem at present to have a 
clue as to how to prevent attack on spring-sown Wheat, or on the Oats 
and Barley, for we do not know where the flies which lay the eggs 
pass the winter ; but it has been noticed that the attack particularly 
takes place to Wheat sown after bare fallow. If this Wheat was sown 
early in the autumn, whilst the flies from the summer brood were 
about, this would quite account for the attack taking place; and there¬ 
fore it seems probable that, as with Hessian Fly attack, at least to 
autumn-sown Wheat, might be quite avoided by late autumn sowing. 
In the course of the coming year I should be very glad to receive, 
for examination, heads of Wheat, Barley, or Oats, in which the grain 
may be observed to be deficient and small, accompanied by presence 
of small whitish maggot, which possibly might help us to knowing 
the summer form of attack of the “Frit” Fly. 
