154 LEPIDOPTERA. 



the stems), Indian hemp, tobacco, henbane ; also the ears of 

 maize, devouring both grain and envelope, but hiding itself 

 in the husk ; very destructive to this crop in Illinois, Kentucky, 

 Kansas, and other parts of the United States, as well as in 

 New Zealand. But in the United States it is even more 

 mischievous to the cotton crop, and is — from its habit of 

 boring into the seed-pod or boll — there well known as the 

 boll- worm. Long reports upon its destructiveness appear in 

 the papers issued by the Departments of Agriculture of 

 various States, and in some years its ravages have caused 

 great alarm. A careful observer in Texas says : " There is 

 one other insect that has destroyed more cotton in this 

 locality within the last four years than all other insects com- 

 bined. The moth deposits eggs by piercing the square at 

 the base of the bud. The egg hatches in a few days and 

 the worm devours the young boll before it fairly blooms. 

 Then it crawls upon the limb to another boll, bores in and 

 eats out the contents, then to another, and so on, until all, 

 or nearly all, that are upon the stalk are destroyed. Its 

 numbers are increasing so rapidly and its destruction is so 

 great that it is becoming a terror to cotton planters in this 

 locality." (It is hardly necessary here again to point out 

 that the worm of American writers is the caterpillar, or, as we 

 usually say, the larva.) In the cotton district there appear 

 to be several generations in a season, the first brood of moths 

 appearing in May, and the lame sometimes feeding up, from 

 hatching to full growth, in twenty days ! Professor Comstock's 

 report (1879) furnishes an enormous mass of information 

 which I am quite unable to reproduce. Professor Riley has 

 also written largely on the subject, and he mentions another 

 crop to which this larva has become terribly destructive. 

 " The glutton is not even satisfied with ravaging these two 

 great staples of the country, cotton and corn, but, as I dis- 

 covered in 1867, it voraciously attacks the tomato in South 

 Illinois, eating into the green fruit and thereby causing much 

 fruit to rot. In this manner it often causes serious loss to 



