48 EXPERIMENTS ON THE COTTON WORM. 
The Cotton Worm (Aletia xylina) appeared in this vicinity the lat- 
ter part of August. In many other parts of the State it appeared 
earlier, and had a much longer time to depredate. I traveled along the 
line of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, stopping at half a dozen places, 
and found the worms in some places in the prairie in large numbers 
and doing considerable damage in August. I did not revisit that. 
section, and therefore do not know to what extent the ravages were 
pushed. At that time the conditions there, as well as here, were most 
favorable to the multiplication of the insects; it was very warm, and 
rain was falling at very short intervals. Whilst the cotton there was 
late in starting and the fall was favorable for its maturity, the Cotton 
Worm had an unusually good beginning and prospect. The indications 
at that time were that much damage would be inflicted by them. 
The field near here, in which I first found the worms, and in which I 
observed them through the season after their appearance, was one that 
had been cultivated negligently. There was in it a large quantity of 
‘““erab grass,” which furnished lurking places for moths. Other fields 
separated from this by only a short distance, in one or two places only 
by a fence and road, were scarcely attacked at all. I inferred from what 
I saw that careful, clean cultivation contributes largely to the immunity 
of the crop from the depredations of these pests, and therefore pays. 
Most of the land in this field is undulating; a small part lies along the 
bed of a stream which flows freely in winter and sprin g, but becomes dry 
in summer; this is flat, level land. The undulating land was a sandy 
loam, quite open, porous and friable, allowing water to sink through it 
with great ease. The bottom had somewhat more of stiffness and com- 
pactness. Iam thus careful to mention the characteristics of these soils 
because it would appear that the undulating lands would, furnish more 
favorable habitations for ants and some other insects supposed to de- 
vour Cotton Worms. It is a fact that the undulating lands had far more 
ants than the “bottom”; but it is also true that there were more Cotton 
Worms on the undulating lands. Where the ants abounded, there the 
Cotton Worms abounded also. This fact contradicted my expectation, 
but the fact stands true nevertheless. I have no explanation of the 
relatively diminished numbers of worms on the flat lands, unless the 
following observations account for it: (1) The cotton was larger on the 
level land, the leaves larger, coarser, and apparently tougher. (2) There 
were many more spiders on the lowlands. Several times I saw spiders 
eating worms as they became quiescent, having spun a few threads about 
themselves and rolled the leaf just before becoming pupez. 
During the warm wet weather in August and the earlier part of Sep- 
tember the worms increased rapidly, especially on the undulating lands. 
Before the middle of September the weather became settled, clear and 
warm. When the second brood of worms formed moths, thousands of 
them could be found in the daytime concealing: themselves in the dense 
and tall grass that had grown on the cotton rows, and yet the next 
