24 
OTHER COTTON INSECTS. 
The reports of the Entomological Commission and the report by 
Comstock, published by this Department in 1879, treated only inci- 
dentally of the other insects which affect the cotton plant. The main 
endeavor in the large investigation was to cover the ground of the cot- 
ton worm; even the bollworm was considered as of minor importance. 
In fact, the only consideration given to the subject of the other insect 
enemies of this crop has been the description of a few species by 
Glover in several of the earlier reports of this Department, and in his 
copper-engraved folio entitled ‘Cotton insects.” The writer has com- 
piled a list of the insects found in the cotton fields and which are men- 
tioned in the reports of Glover, in the bulletins and special reports of 
the Division of Entomology, in Bulletin 3 and the Fourth Report of 
the Entomological Commission, together with those mentioned in the 
notebooks of the Division of Entomology and of the United States 
Entomological Commission, and has added to this list the species men- — 
tioned in the monthly reports of the statistical division of this Depart- 
ment, those collected by Ashmead in Mississippi in the summer of 
1893, those collected by Barnard in Louisiana in 1879-80, and those 
collected by Mally in Mississippi and Louisiana in 1890-91, together 
with a few collected by Banks in Louisiana in 1891. 
The list as a whole comprises about 465 species. A small proportion 
of these, however, can be considered as injurious to the cotton plant 
and still smaller numbers have attracted the attention of cotton plant- 
ers through their injuries to the crop. Many of them are parasitic or 
predaceous upon species which damage the plant to a greater or less 
extent, while many others are accidental visitors to the cotton fields, 
and might have been collected as readily in fields of corn or cowpeas in 
the same general locality. Some little consideration, however, may be 
given here to certain species which occasionally accomplish considerable 
damage. 
CUTWORMS. 
The first insect which attacks the young cotton plant in the spring is 
liable tobe acutworm. Soon after the young plants come up, and often 
after they are fairly well grown, they are liable to be cut off at the sur- 
face of the ground by one of these caterpillars, all of which have the 
habit of hiding beneath the surface of the ground by day and coming 
out to work at night. The work of these insects in general was fre- 
quently mentioned by Glover, but the species were not determined. In 
Riley’s report as Entomologist to this Department for 1884 the subject 
of cutworms in cabbage fields received careful treatment, and the state- 
ment was incidentally made upon page 291 that the granulated cutworm 
(the larvaof Feltia annexa Treitschke) is probably the most common of 
the species collectively designated by Glover as the “ cotton cutworm.” 
This species is iuustrated herewith. A number of other species, how- 
