Life History.

The perfect insect, the fly, makes its appearance usually about the beginning of May and lays eggs, one or two white eggs at a time, on the outsides of the leaves of the corn plants enwrapping the shoots containing the embryonic ears. The larva is hatched in a few days after the deposition of the eggs, and pushes into the shoot in which it forms burrows, making for the ear upon whose sweet juices it feeds. In due course, and generally after the plant has become irretrievably injured, the larva becomes a pupa and the perfect stage is assumed about the beginning of August. The pupa is of a darker, more of an orange, yellow than the larva, and has a hard stiff case. It is yet a moot point as to the form in which, and where, the winter is passed. Taschenberg holds that there are two generations, that of the winter and that of the summer, and that the flies found in August lay eggs upon grasses from which larvae are hatched, and thus pass the winter in the stalks, and penetrate even to the crown of the roots for shelter. Curtis also thinks this is probable.