The Bulletin. 



But if the farmer is to know just what methods to adopt to avoid 

 insect pests, he should be intelligent enough to know just what those 

 insects are, and how they live, grow and change from one stage of life 

 to another. This information we here give with regard to our most 

 serious cotton insect pests. 



CUT-WORMS (Several Species). 

 Order Lepidoptera. Family Noctuidas. 



Description. — Bather stout-bodied, soft, brown, blackish or grayish 

 caterpillars, which remain concealed during the day and do great 

 injury at night by eating off young plants at or near the surface of 

 the ground. 



Injun/ in North Carolina. — Cut-worms are such a common and 

 universal nuisance that they do not excite comment or complaint at all 

 commensurate with the injuries which they actually inflict. When a 

 farmer does complain of them it is usually in a general way as attack- 

 ing all crops ancl not with regard to any one in particular, hence we 

 have not had much specific complaint of Cut-worm injury to cotton, 

 although it is a matter of common knowledge that such injury does 

 occur. Kecent inquiry into cotton growing conditions brings out the 

 fact that Cut-worms are more serious to cotton in our piedmont 

 counties than in the extreme east, the growers in Mecklenburg County 

 making frequent mention of them as serious pests. 



Fig. 1. — Variegated Cut-worm, showing adult at o; larva or Cut-worm 

 (three views) at 6, c, and d; egg (enlarged) at e, and eggs in natural 

 position on grass-stalk at/. All about natural size, except e. 

 (After Howard, Bur. Ent., U. S. Dept. Agr.) 



Although Cut-worms are present and do more or less damage every 

 season, the year of 1905 seems to have been one of special abundance 

 and destruction by them in this State. 



