52 
PEAR. 
Drawing the earth up over the bulbs, as in earthing up Peas, I 
have also found to answer well, and, though the first of these two 
plans is scarcely possible in field cultivation where the crop is broad¬ 
casted, it may be suggested, with regard to the second, whether, when 
the workers are thinning the crop, they might not at the same time 
draw the soil over the remaining bulbs. 
The time when the young crop is thinned is the—or at least one 
of the—most critical periods, as the bruised, disturbed, plants attract 
the Fly, the roots are then most exposed, and also are often checked 
in the growth which might have carried them through attack. 
The following information, sent by Mr. W. Harrison from Eskdale, 
near Carnforth, refers to a successful experiment with soot as a means 
of checking attack of Onion maggot when in progress :— 
“ The Onion-bed was about twenty feet in length. The maggots 
had commenced work from one end, and destroyed three-quarters of 
the crop. I applied the soot, and washed it well into the ground with 
a watering-can. I am glad to report that it had the desired effect, 
preserving the remainder of the Onions.” 
PARSNIPS- 
For Parsnip and Celery Fly, Tephritis Onopordinis, see pp. 20, 21. 
PEAR. 
Pear Midge. Cecidomyia nigra, Meig. 
On June 15th I was favoured by Lord Walsingliam with specimens 
illustrative of injury to young Pears, caused by the maggots of a kind 
of small Fly or Gnat-midge which I am not aware of having been 
previously noticed as injurious to a serious extent in this country. 
The specimens which were forwarded were of small abortive Pears 
gathered on one of Lord Walsinghanrs farms in Norfolk. The inside 
of these Pears were then in process of being eaten away by the small 
white legless maggots within, and information was sent accompanying 
that every Pear on the trees from which the samples of injury were 
taken was infested by them. 
These maggots agreed, both in their habits and in the kind of 
injury they were causing, with those of the Black Gall Midge, the 
