Wheat-bulb Fly. Hylemyia coarctata , Fallen. 
w, 
Wheat-bulb Fly (Hylemyia coarctata ), magnified, and lines showing nat. size ; 
maggots and chrysalids, nat. size and mag.; mouth apparatus, and extremity of 
tail, with tubercles, mag.; infested plant. 
During the past season, only a few observations of Wheat-bulb Fly 
were forwarded, but such reports as I received were from localities so 
far from each other as to show the infestation to be widely distributed, 
and they also showed that the kind of attack was the cause of very 
serious injury. 
The damage is caused (as mentioned in previous Eeports) by the 
small, whitish, legless maggots (figured above) feeding within the 
young Wheat plants early in the season, and so destroying the infested 
shoot; and, as the mischief that is going forward is rarely known of 
until attention is drawn to it by the withering of the shoot in which 
the maggot has been feeding, it is then too late to do much to help the 
failing crop. 
The presence of infestation is noticeable at the beginning of April, 
or some weeks earlier. About the middle of May maggots may be 
found beginning to change to the chrysalis state in or near the 
decaying shoots ruined by their attack, and about the beginning of 
July, in such cases as I have seen, the fly makes its appearance. This 
may be generally described as a greyish hairy two-winged fly of the 
shape figured at the heading.* 
Up to this time we do not know whether there is a second or 
summer brood. It does not seem likely that the flies which hatch out 
in July should live on to infest autumn and winter Wheat, sown, as 
for instance in 1889, at dates of which we have record in October, 
* For descriptions of the perfect insect and larva, see my ‘ Twelfth Report on 
Injurious Insects,’ pp. 80, 81, 
