FRIT FLY. 
39 
besides wliat was reared from other specimens, that the fly, which on 
examination was identified as the true Frit Fly, Oscinis frit , was the 
cause of the widespread loss. 
The following communication from Tregaswith, St. Columb, Corn¬ 
wall, is also valuable, as showing how, throughout a district, the 
crop showed no sign of what was going on till the mischief was done. 
Mr. James Stick, jun., observed:—“ I am one of a great number of 
farmers who are suffering in this district through the failure of spring 
corn, chiefly Oats. The crop came up, and looked well until the latter 
part of May, when it appeared to be checked in its growing, and 
gradually wasted away, until what promised to be a heavy crop will 
only be a third. I have found, on examining the stalk, a very small 
maggot, one-eighth of an inch in length, in the centre of the straw.” 
The above notes refer to the Oat-attack in the South-west of England, 
in various localities from Taunton in Somerset to the western extremity of 
Cornwall. Besides the above , I had notes of the attack from near Reading, 
from Tetsworth, Oxon, from Cirencester , and also from a locality in Kent, 
and from Oakley, near Bedford. 
On July 2nd, Mr. John Watson, writing from the Estate Office, 
Sherburn, Tetsworth, forwarded a plant of Oats as a sample of the 
condition of one field, with the mention that he had found about ten 
larvae and pupae in each of the plants which he had examined. He 
observed :—“ The Oats were drilled about the middle of April on part 
of a field after roots fed off by sheep, the other part of the field being 
planted with Barley, which does not appear to have been attacked. . . . 
I may mention that the field is subject to annual attacks of ‘ wild ’ 
oats. Several pieces of Oats in this neighbourhood have partially 
failed, apparently in the same way, but I have not been able to 
examine them closely. I do not think the crops sufficiently injured to 
make me plough it up, and I suppose we cannot do anything now to 
prevent further damage.” 
The plants sent were mostly still of a good green, and from about 
two or three to four inches high, but had some pale, long, straggling 
shoots. The chrysalids, which were similar to the other specimens of 
Oscinis frit that were sent from many localities, were in the partly- 
decayed leaf-slieaths round the base of the small shoots. A few days 
after,—that is, on July 2nd,—Mr. Watson wrote further to mention 
that they had decided to leave the Oats alone, “ as the last few days of 
warm showery weather have much improved them, and the larvae 
have almost all changed.” 
On July 4th, Mr. Harker, Professor of Zoology at the Royal 
Agricultural College, Cirencester, wrote me that specimens had been 
shown him of Oat-stems infested by a small dipteron in the pupa- 
state, which, from microscopical examination, he conjectured would 
