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y 
12 
comparative immunity during one summer will be followed by con- 
siderable damage the next. Professor Garman, in Bulletin No. 66 of 
the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, states that the sum- 
mer of 1896 was one of extraordinary abundance. The horn worms 
‘“were present on both tobacco and tomato in myriads, and proved so 
destructive that some fields of tobacco were abandoned and in the 
fall presented only a wilderness of stems and midribs of leaves. In | 
such fields as many as five worms, representing both species, were 
frequently observed on a single plant. Their advent was so sudden 
that before the seriousness of the outbreak was realized tobacco that 
had been the pride of the owner and showed scarcely a mutilated leaf 
was severely injured. It was near cutting time when they became 
most abundant, and some growers preferred to cut their tobacco as 
the best means of saving it. On suckers in fields and on abandoned 
tobacco the worms remained until frosts killed the plants. Large 
numbers of both species were collected in October from such tobacco, 
and they were observed in fields until October 12.” 
Both kinds of horn worms are extremely subject to disease and to 
the attacks of natural enemies. Caterpillars which are observed to 
turn dark in color are attacked by a bacterial disease, which invariably 
results in their death (fig. 6). Certain parasitic insects attack others, 
and all tobaeco growers are familiar with the appearance of a horn 
worm partly or entirely covered with little, white, oval cocoons. Such 
specimens should not be crushed, since the cocoons are made by one 
of the most important of the parasites of these larvee, which, if allowed 
to emerge undisturbed, will increase the mortality among the cater- 
pillars. Others may occasionally be noticed bearing very minute, oval, 
white eggs sticking closely tothe skin. These are the eggs of a Tachina 
fly, and the maggots which hatch from these eggs bore into the eater- 
pillar and eventually destroy it. 
REMEDIES. 
It will be unnecessary to repeat what has been said under the head 
of ‘‘ The tobacco flea-beetle” concerning the use of arsenical poisons. 
When the first generation of horn worms appears (and each tobacco 
grower must determine the approximate date from observation in his 
own fields), an application of Paris green, either dry or in the liquid 
form, as elsewhere described, is by far the best remedy when the 
insects are numerous. In ordinary seasons and in certain localities 
the tobacco crop will not suffer so severely that it can not be protected 
by the ordinary process of hand picking, or ‘‘ worming,” as it is called. 
Most conservative tobacco planters send their hands through the 
fields to pick off the caterpillars and crush them, and rely upon no 
other remedial work. 
The adult moth possesses a long beak, through which it sucks the 
nectar of flowers, being attracted. especially to the sweetest flowers 

: 
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ONY Oa a eee 
