34 
CORN AND GRASS. 
shaking the stalks of the Wheat, or otherwise disturbing them, they 
will fly about near the ground in great numbers. “ I found their 
station of repose to be upon the lower part of the culm, with their 
heads upwards.” 
I give Curtis’s figure of the “Wheat Midge,” here alluded to, at 
the head of this paper for convenience of reference. The specimens 
forwarded to me by Mr. Baillie almost exactly resembled this kind, 
the C. tritici, but I could not take upon myself to say whether they 
ivere precisely the same species or not. I therefore forwarded them for 
the benefit of thoroughly skilled examination to Mr. R. H. Meade, of 
Manningham, Bradford, who stated the insect belonged to the 
Cecidomyia , subgenus Diplosis, H. L. W., and he considered it was 
probably a new or undescribed species. The specimens sent might 
possibly be small varieties of C. tritici, but as all that were sent were 
females the kind could not be determined with certainty. 
On the 18th of July attack from the midges mentioned above was 
set up in the heads of the Foxtail Grass, and Mr. Baillie reported :— 
“ I find the larva of Cecidomyia present, now so far advanced as to 
admit of proper examination. I yesterday took one head and analysed 
the seeds, dissecting them and examining them with sufficient care to 
enable me to say that the result here given is about correct. I found 
the head composed of ‘ seeds ’ as follows :—187 apparently empty and 
unopened glumes ; 179 ‘ filled ’ seeds of good quality ; 75 containing 
larvae.” 
The maggots, of which specimens were sent, proved to be of the 
Red Maggot with the somewhat pointed anchor process. 
We have thus the complete season’s observation : maggots found 
in the dry seed which had been harvested ; the midge at work laying 
eggs in June ; and the beginning of the attack of maggots in July ; 
and I have given Mr. Baillie’s careful observations in detail, as thus 
we have proof of the habits of this midge, and the Wheat Midge, being 
so similar that it may be presumed all methods applicable for preven¬ 
tion of the Wheat Midge are applicable to the Foxtail attack. 
These turn mainly, as has been mentioned in previous reports, on 
such treatment of stubble as will destroy the maggot sheltering at the 
corn or grass roots; as, for instance, collecting stubble-roots in heaps 
and burning them ; likewise deep ploughing, which will bury the 
maggots; and likewise so treating infested chaff as to destroy all 
maggots in it. Further, the removal of wild grasses, which may be 
food-plants for the maggots, from round corn-fields; which treatment is 
proved to be eminently desirable by the present observations of the 
extent to which “ Foxtail ” is infested. 
This matter of the Red Maggot has to be looked to in the 
double light of both a corn and grass seed pest, and where Meadow 
