49 
comparatively little use of it for that purpose because of the amount 
of work required to go over a cabbage plant with the torch. 
Professor J. M. Stedman, of Missouri, writes more confidently 
of its usefulness against the cabbage-bug, saying, under date of 
October 28, 1903, "I have not found the gasoline torch of any spe- 
cial value as an insecticide apparatus except in extreme cases when 
one has a sufficient number of the harlequin cabbage-bugs in his 
cabbages to cause serious trouble. I have then used this torch to 
good advantage. One can very readily pass over the cabbages fast 
enough not to injure them, and at the same time to kill the harlequin 
bugs. It is not necessary to have the bugs scorched sufficiently to 
drop at once, as I have found that they will ultimately die if this 
intense heat has been very rapidly applied." 
This cabbage-bug is not widely destructive in this state, although 
it is continuously present in some parts of southern Illinois, and dur- 
ing one season extended its injuries as far north as Champaign, and 
was once found in Chicago by Mr. A. Bolter. The reported effec- 
tiveness of this torch against this insect suggests the trial of it 
against other bugs, which cannot be killed with arsenical poisons 
since they do not eat the solid substance of their food plant but 
merely suck its sap. 
The Cotton Boll-zwcvil. — The appearance in Texas of the snout- 
beetle known as the Mexican boll-weevil has caused general and jus- 
tifiable alarm among the cotton-growers of the South, and the former 
Texas State Entomologist, Professor Sanderson, has devoted him- 
self to an assiduous study of the insect and has made many experi- 
ments for its destruction and control. This is indeed the most im- 
portant, pressing, and perplexing problem which the economic en- 
tomologist now has to deal with in the Southern States. In the 
course of his work against this insect Profesor Sanderson has tried 
two forms of the gasoline torch ; one, a blast-lamp known as the 
pear-burner, used in southwestern Texas for burning the thorns off 
the prickly pear, and the other a torch sent him from Illinois by a 
dealer who offers and advertises it for sale for the destruction of in- 
sects. The latter was found so faulty in construction that it could 
not be used, and it was consequently returned. 
The pear-burner, which generates a much more powerful blast 
than any of the smaller torches, was tried by Professor Sanderson 
for burning up the squares of the boll-weevil as they lay upon the 
ground, but so far, as he writes me October 28 of this year, he has 
not had sufficient success with it to indicate that it has any value 
for this purpose. 
