Circular No. 153. issued May i8, 1912. 



United States Department of Agriculture, 



BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY. 



L. O. HOWARD, Entomologist and Chief of Bureau. 



THE COTTON WORM OR COTTON CATERPILLAR. 



(Alabama argillacea Hubn.) 



By W. D. Hunter, 

 In Charge of Southern Field Crop Insect Investigations. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The cotton worm, or cotton caterpillar, also but incorrectly called 

 the "army worm," has been known to cotton planters in the United 

 States since 1793. Before the invasion by the boll weevil it and the 

 bollworm were by all odds the most destructive cotton insects in 

 this country. During some seasons the damage by the caterpillar 

 began as early as June and occasionally the fields were completely 

 defohated by the middle of July. The destructiveness of the insect 

 and the consternation caused among cotton planters by its ravages 

 are well described in an account published by Air. Thomas Affleck of 

 Washington, Miss., in the American Agriculturist of September 9, 

 1846: 



The caterpillar, cotton worm, cotton moth, or chenille of the French West Indies, 

 Guiana, etc., has utterly blighted the hopes of the cotton planter for the present year, 

 and produced most anxious fears for the future. I have heard from the greater part 

 of the cotton-growing region — the news is all alike — the worm has destroyed the crop. 

 I have no idea that any considerable portion of any State will escape. * * * The 

 present year the crop is unusually backward, at least four weeks later than usual. 

 We have but just commenced picking, usually beginning about the last week in July 

 or the first week in August. At this moment every field within this region of country, 

 say, south of Vicksburg, is stripped of everything but the stems, the larger branches, 

 and a few of the first bolls, already too hard for the worms' power of mastication. The 

 full-grown bolls not yet become hard are completely eaten out, a circumstance I have 

 never heard of but once before, in 1825. The fields present a most melancholy appear- 

 ance; looking from the bluff at Natchez across the river to those fine plantations back 

 of Vidalia, nothing is to be seen but the brown withered skeleton of the plant. 



Until about 1871 no satisfactory methods of combating the cotton 

 cateqnllar had been discovered. Many fallacious remedies, such as 

 attracting the moths to large fires in the fields, were more or less in 

 use, but the onl}' ones of even the sUghtest value were brushing the 



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