20 
CORN 
i 
cover; but the secondary stems were always puny and unprolific, 
compared with the original ones. 
“Early sowing, where possible, appears to me to be an obvious 
preventive, and a dressing of 1 cwt. or so of nitrate of soda, to 
stimulate the crop to pass quickly through that stage of its growth 
when it is liable to attack, is one of the best measures available.”— 
W. M‘C. 
This suggestion of an early application of fertilizing dressing, or, 
indeed, whatever treatment is calculated to push on as early and 
healthily rapid a growth as can be managed, is well worth looking at 
in the light of what happens commonly to young Corn-crops when 
maggot-attacked in the bulb. When rain comes (unless the plants are 
quite past hope), the side-shoots make a start, or, if stimulating 
dressings are applied when the crop is failing, the same result happens, 
and something towards a yield is secured. But the side growth is late, 
and the crop probably ripens unevenly, with a varying sample. 
With regard to Frit-fly, this is such an unusual attack in this 
country that it may be hoped there was some special cause for its 
specially injurious appearance, but the principle of, so to say, getting 
beforehand with attack may prove of much use in other cases of Corn- 
infestation of bulb or stem. 
Winter form of Frit-fly attack .—On November 12th I received from 
Mr. George F. Gay, Wylie, Bath, some young Oat-plants, with a 
memorandum:—“ I herewith send you some plants of Winter Oats, 
which are being killed by an insect (a small maggot), which you will 
doubtless find in some of the stems, as I have done.” 
The plants sent me were from about two to three inches high, and 
the upper part very much reddened; on drawing this gently the shoot 
came away, and within, at the injured part, I found a small white 
maggot of some kind of two-winged fly. These maggots were from 
about l-16th to 3-16ths of an inch in length, legless, cylindrical, and 
with well-marked segments. At the head end they were furnished 
with strong-curved mouth-hooks, and at the tail extremity the two 
tracheae ended in two well-developed wart-like tubercles. Near the 
head extremity the tracheae ended on each side in a very distinguish¬ 
able branched spiracle. 
This appearance agrees with descriptions of the larva of the Frit- 
fly, also with what I have myself seen previously of these larvae in the 
summer Oat-plants; and also when I examined these larvae (or 
maggots) now sent, together with specimens of the summer brood, 
under a one-inch object-glass, I could distinguish no difference; 
therefore I think we have now learnt, with regard to one of our young 
Corn-stem or Corn-bulb maggot pests, what has been so long needed 
regarding most of them in this country ; that is, where they spend the 
winter . We still need to know where the summer brood from the June- 
* 
