FRIT FLY. 
35 
During the early part of last summer much damage was done to 
young plants, both of Wheat and Oats, by fly-maggots feeding within 
the central shoot. No difference was observable in the method of 
injury to each kind of crop, but on microscopic examination of the 
small, white, legless maggots that caused it, these proved to be clearly 
distinguishable, one kind infesting the Wheat-plants, the other the 
Oat-plants. In due time the maggots went through their changes up 
to the perfect flies, showing the Wheat to be infested by the maggots 
of a small two-winged fly, scientifically the Hylemia coarctata (which 
is described further on in this Report under the heading of “ Wheat- 
bulb Maggot”), and the Oat-plants to be infested by the maggots of 
the “ Frit Fly,” the Oscinis frit. 
This is a small, very brightly shining, black, two-winged fly, rather 
under the eighth of an inch in length. “ Legs black, the tarsi (feet) 
of the hinder pair, with the exception of the end joints, yellow; the 
fore feet brown-yellow, the midmost often much darker ; the wings 
transparent, somewhat brown at the fore edge.”* It is also dis¬ 
tinguishable by its peculiar habit of dancing or skipping about, which 
has been very noticeable in the specimens I have reared. This fly is 
common in various parts of the Continent, and especially recorded as 
present in France, Germany, and Sweden. It attacks both Oats and 
Barley in the manner only too well known to us by last season’s 
damages, when so much of the young Oat-plant was destroyed in May 
and June by the maggot feeding within the young plant. But besides 
this early attack, great damage was recorded formerly in Sweden from 
the second brood, the maggots of which fed on the soft grains in the 
ears of Barley, and thereby caused the light worthless development of 
the corn, known in Swedish as “ frits,” whence the name of the fly. 
Up to the present year, I am not aware of this attack being 
prevalent to an observably injurious extent in Britain, although the 
presence of the Oscinis vastator, Curtis, which appears, as far as can be 
made out, to be the same as the O.frit , Linn., was watched and 
recorded in 1844 by John Curtis, in his * Farm Insects.’ In 1881 
I was favoured, by Mr. R. H. Meade, of Bradford, with the informa¬ 
tion that the Oscinis frit had been observed in the autumn of that year 
in swarms in an outbuilding, in the lofts of which a lot of newly- 
threshed Barley had been stored ; but it was not until last year (1887) 
that I was able to watch this attack throughout its course up to 
development of the fly as a regular field attack to young Oat-plants. 
To be absolutely certain as to the identity of the fly, I submitted 
samples of what I had reared to Mr. R. H. Meade, who was good 
* For description of the “Frit Fly,” see ‘Fauna Austriaca die Fliegen,’ by 
Dr. J. R. Schiner, ii. Theil, p. 224; and for description in all its stages, with life- 
history, see ‘ Praktische Insekten Kunde,’ by Dr. E. L. Taschenberg, pt. iv., p. 151. 
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