AMERICAN CLOVER-SEED MIDGE. 
25 
is for the maggots of the first brood to leave the Clover heads in July. 
The gnat midges from these come out in August, and the maggots from 
eggs laid by these will be in the Clover heads of the late crop in 
September. 
The maggots of the late brood may, according to weather and special 
circumstance, remain undeveloped to the perfect insect until the fol¬ 
lowing spring, or the gnat fly may appear during the autumn or winter. 
To the unassisted eye, this appears merely like a little blackish or 
brownish two-winged gnat, about the eighth of an inch in length, and 
so much resembles the Clover-leaf Midge which is a European kind, 
that the two species can only be distinguished trustworthily by micro¬ 
scopic examination. 
Of this (the Cecidomyia trifolii , Loew.) Dr. Lintner says the principal 
differences given are its smaller size, and two antennal joints less in 
the female (fourteen instead of sixteen). 
In order to be perfectly certain of the identity of the species which 
I reared, I submitted a specimen to Mr. R. H. Meade, of Bradford, who 
kindly examined it and informed me “that it is without doubt 
Lintner’s Cecidomyia leguminicola The specimen was a female, and 
corresponded, in the important point of characteristics of the antennae, 
with the figure and description. 
The following is the description of the Clover-seed Midge given by 
Prof. Saunders :—“ The perfect insect is a minute two-winged fly, 
about the size and general appearance of the common Wheat Midge. 
The head is black; the antennae long, yellowish red, with sixteen or 
seventeen joints in the female, and fifteen in the male. Wings nearly 
transparent, clothed with many short curved blackish hairs, which 
give them a blackish appearance; each wing has three longitudinal 
veins, the third either forming a fork, or else becoming more or less 
obsolete towards the tip. Hairy fringe of wings paler and composed 
of longer hairs than those on surface of the wing. Abdomen fuscous 
with black hairs above on each segment; thorax black and clothed 
with rather long hairs. The male has an extended pair of clasping 
organs on the hinder extremity ; the female a long pointed ovipositor, 
about twice the length of the abdomen.”* 
In the same paper Prof. Saunders notes “that the method of 
change is for the maggots after they have left the Clover heads and 
gone down into the ground, or into leaves or rubbish on the surface, 
to spin each for itself an oval compressed rather tough cocoon of fine 
silk, with particles of earth or other material adhering to the outside.” 
“ The duration of the pupa state of the early brood is about ten 
days.”—(W. S.) 
* See paper on the Clover-seed Midge, Cecidomyia leguminicola , Lintner, by 
Prof. W. Saunders. ‘ Twelfth Annual Report of Ent. Soc. of Ontario,’ p. 39. 
