ONION FLY. 
51 
Tliis first-observed method of attack was stated to begin by the Fly 
laying her eggs on the leaves of the Onion close to the surface of the 
earth, from which point the maggots made their way between the 
leaves into the lowest part of the Onion bulb. 
Anthomyia ceparum] 
Onion Fly, maggot, and pupa ; magnified. Pupa in stored Onion. Lines 
showing nat. size. 
This was the form of attack ascribed by John Curtis to the 
Anthomyia ceparum , now named by Mr. E. H. Meade, to distinguish it 
clearly from A. ceparum of other writers, Anthomyia ( Phorbia ) cepetorum. 
In the case of the Onion Fly, which I have repeatedly found 
attacking Onions when partially uncovered or shaken from the soil by 
hoeing, the injury began not from above the bulb , but below it or at the 
side. The maggot-entrance had distinctly been made at the base of 
the exposed bulb, or, if the whole bulb was not exposed, at the side. 
The kind that caused this injury was different to the above, but 
the question of identity is so involved, that, beyond saying that I 
gather it (from the result of minute enquiry and reference I have been 
favoured with) to have been the A. platura of Meigen (? A. cilicura of 
Bondani), I do not enter on the subject of the scientific name. 
Various measures of treatment for Onion Fly have been given in 
previous Eeports, but in personal experiment I find that any measures 
which will preserve the bulb from being exposed above ground, or 
which will bury it again up to the neck, if exposed in hoeing, &c., are 
very serviceable. 
In garden cultivation earth may be thrown along the rows so that 
the Fly is perfectly unable to yet at the bulbs to lay ; and I have found 
treatment of this sort immediately followed by the eggs being laid at 
haphazard high on the leaves or dropped on the ground, where they 
perished, and the Onions consequently escaped attack. 
