320 



A Boll-worm Letter. 



Will you kindly send nie the most recent printed matter on fighting the Cotton Boll- 

 worm. We are esttihlishing a branch of our station on one of the State farms in the 

 Brazos River Bottom in the southern part of the State, where cotton grows G to8 feet 

 high, and where this pest will sometimes destroy 100 acres in a block. Will be glad 

 to have you make suggestions in regard to undertaking the woi-k. — [F. A. GuUey, 

 Director State Experiment Station, College Station, Tex., March 27, 1839, 



Reply. — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of yours of the 27th ult. We have 

 done no work here upon the Cotton Boll-worm since the publication of the Fourth Re- 

 port of the U. S. Entomological Commission, a copy of which you doubtless possess. 

 You will notice from this report that the principal practical remedies are the avoid- 

 ance of corn crops in the immediate vicinitj' of cotton-lields; the early worming of 

 neighboring corn ; and above all the early poisouing of the cotton crop with Paris 

 green or Loudon purple, as for the Cottou Worm. Some extensive experiments are 

 really needed, and you have a most excellent opportunity of testing particularly this 

 last remedy. It is to a certain extent theoretical, although, as you will notice by the 

 appendices of the Fourth Report, the experiments which have been tried upon a small 

 scale indicate that it will be successful. — [April 1, 1889.] 



A remarkable Theory. 



Thirty years ago, while going my daily morning rounds to kill the millers that were 

 troubling my honey bees, I found a common grasshopper with his skiu cracked open 

 on his back and with a cricket inside the grasshopper's skiu. It produced a sensation 

 with me, as I had supposed that the grasshopper and cricket belonged to different 

 genera. I had no books to help me, so I went to work to study the grasshopper fam- 

 ily. I soon satisfied myself that the cricket was a pupa. Then the question arose, 

 what was the imago ? I found that the flying grasshoppers made their appearance at 

 the time the crickets left, and were full grown when they came and were more nearly 

 like the crickets than the most of imagos are like the pupas from which they come. I 

 satisfied myself that the crickets with their rear stylets could not mate if they wanted 

 to. I ought to have added, for the week following my discovery of the grasshopper 

 changing to a cricket, I saw from oue to three in the same condition each day. After 

 two years I found two crickets that had a burrow iu my gardeu, which I resolved to 

 watch. I commenced to work at them on the 10th of July. I went to look after them 

 about every half hour. I watched two or three days aad found a flying grasshopper 

 at the mouth of the burrow. It was quite stupid, so that I could pick it up and lay it 

 down. It took it two or three days to get life enough to attempt to fly or to get out of 

 my way. It finally became active. At the time that I found this one I dug into the 

 burrow to look after the other cricket, but it was not there. It had probably been 

 caught by the fowls. But I found a cricket's skin, which was good enough proof to 

 convince me that the cricket had changed to a flying grasshopper. In the printed slip 

 I have given the rule. I will now give exceptions. The rule is given for the three 

 largest species. Three times in the last thirty years, after a protracted season of dry, 

 warm weather, I have seen the crickets of the smallest of the three species of grasshop- 

 pers on the 25th of August, otherwise I have not seen any before the end of the first 

 week in September. Another exception is, that after a protracted season of cold, 

 wet weather on bleak hills I have known the common grasshoppers to live over win- 

 ter before changing to crickets. If you would like to experiment, I would send 

 you a few flying grasshoppers, after they had mated and been fertilized, with the 

 expectation that you could hatch their eggs aud produce before spring a crop of 

 crickets which'would show all the stages of the insects. 



About ten years after making my discovery I got Professor Tenuey's " Zoology." I 

 there saw the common grasshopper, the cricket, and the flying grasshopper described 

 as three distinct genera. This i)roduced another sensation, it being the first intima- 



