104 THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF 



nished me, in detail, his reasons for this conclusion ; but until the 

 matter is settled beyond all doubt it would be premature to speculate 

 farther on such a new and remarkable habit in such a common and 

 well known insect. 



THE CORN- WORM alias BOLL-WORM— ZM/oMzs armigera, Hiib- 



ner. 



(Lepidoptera, Noctuidse.) 



This is a worm which is every year more or less destructive to our 

 corn in the ear, and which was this year very injurious in many sec- 

 tions. 



It has a very wide range, and a Mr. Bond, at the meeting of the 

 London (England) Entomological Society, on March 1st, 186J, exhib- 

 ited specimens of the moth from the Isle of Wight, from Japan, and 

 from Australia; and, as might be expected from its extended habitat, 

 the insect is a very general feeder. The " Boll-worm" has become a 

 by-word in all the Southern cotton-growing States, and the " Corn- 

 worm" is a like familiar term in those States, as well as in many other 

 parts of the Union ; but few persons suspect that these two worms — 

 the one feeding on the corn, the other on the cotton-boll — are identi- 

 cally the same insect, producing exactly the same species of moth. 

 But such is the fact, as I myself first experimentally proved in 1864. 

 It attacks corn in the ear, at first feeding on the "silk," but afterwards 

 devouring the kernels at the terminal end ; being securely sheltered 

 the while within the husk. I have seen whole fields of corn nearly 

 ruined in this way, in the State of Kentucky, but nowhere have I 

 known it to be so destructive as in Southern Illinois. Here, as in our 

 own State, there are two broods of the worms during the year, and very 

 early and very late corn fare the worst; moderately late and moder- 

 ately early varieties usually escaping. I was formerly of the opinion 

 that this worm* could not live on hard corn, and it certainly does 

 generally disappear before the corn fully ripens, but last fall Mr. 

 James Harkness, of St. Louis, brought me, as late as the latter part of 

 October, from a corn field on the Illinois bottom, a number of large 

 and well ripened ears, each containing from one to five worms of dif- 

 ferent sizes, subsisting and flourishing on the hard kernels. This is, 

 however, an exceptional occurrence, brought about, no doubt, by the 

 long protracted warm weather which we had, and the worms were in 

 all probability a third brood. 



* Am. Ent. T, p. 212. 



