SB 

 818 

 C578 

 ENT 



No. 62. 



lited States Department of Agriculture, 



BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY. 

 L. O. HOWARD, Entomologist. 



THE cabha(;f: hair-worm. 



By F. H. Chittenden, 

 In Charge of Breeding Experiments. 



Not since the " kissing-bug" craze which originated in Washington, 

 D. C, in June, 1899, and spread generally' throughout the country, lias 

 there been anything Hke such a furor as was created by the discovery of 

 the so-called "cabbage snake," a species of hair-worm, in the heads 

 of cabbage in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Louisiana, in the fall of 

 1903. That year the cabbage-snake scare was practically confined 

 to Tennessee and neighboring States southward. The first specimen of 

 Mermis albicans Diesing (fig. 1), which is the cause of the trouble,^ was 

 identified from McCays, Tenn. This creature and its still somewhat 

 mysterious occurrence in cabbage has become a matter of much per- 

 plexity and annoyance to many of our correspondents, to economic 

 entomologists, and to chemists and physicians of the States where the 

 Mermis most abounds. Many reports have been received from reliable 

 correspondents of rumors of persons being i)oisoned by eating cabbage 

 affected by this hair-worm. Some 

 of these were gleaned from the daily 

 press, and many clippings of the 

 "yellow journalism" order were re- 

 ceived. Anjong them were alleged 

 reports from a physician who stated 

 that when cabbage affected by hair- 

 worms was eaten it produced instant 

 death, and from a " State chemist" 

 who made an examination of the 

 worm and reported that it contained 



enOUt^h poison "to kill eight per- Fk- l -H«i. worm (K.,,,,,., aJ^-mn^.O-natura! 

 '^ ■ size (orisiiial). 



sons." In Raleigh County, W. Va., 



the cabbage crop was reported a complete failure, and "there was 

 enough poison contained in one worm to poison 25 men." It should 

 be unnecessary to add that none of these reports had any foundation in 

 fact. Nevertheless the known presence of the hair-Avonp in an atYected 

 district seriously injured the demand for cabbage there, causing very 



'So iiKiny inquiries in re;?;:ird to tlio identity of tiie creature and its aile<^ed 

 poisonous nature were received that a sliort account was furnished under tiie 

 title " Hair Worms in Cabbage," in Bui. 44, of this otlice, pp. O.'Mri; and similar 

 inquiries are being made to date of jiublication. During 1V)()4, frequently five or 

 six communications were received daily. 



