160 Mr. W. W. Saunders on 



The Cotton Moth of Georgia and South Carolina. — Dr. Ure 

 gives the following account of this moth : — " The August full 

 moon is likewise the time when the caterpillar makes its appear- 

 ance. It is the offspring of a small brown moth, resembling the 

 candle moth, which deposits its eggs upon the leaves of the 

 Gossypium, always a night or two before the full or new moon ; 

 they hatch a few hours after they are deposited, and are so small 

 at first as to be hardly discernible to the naked eye ; they do 

 little or no damage during the first nine or ten days of their life, 

 like the silkworm eating little in their infancy, but a few days 

 before they complete their growth they become so excessively 

 voracious as to destroy an entire plantation in a few hours. Mr. 

 Spalding has seen 400 acres of cotton of a promising aspect, 

 which four days thereafter did not possess a green leaf, or scarcely 

 a solitary pod upon a plant." — Ure's Cotton, p. 106. 



Cutworm or Grub, of Georgia and Guiana, is thus mentioned. — 

 " When both these sources of danger (frost and north-east wind) 

 are past, there is another enemy, equally destructive, the cock- 

 chafer or cutworm, which prevails in the month of April. As the 

 cotton comes through the ground and remains several days, like 

 the pea or other pulse, with only two radical leaves, every one 

 of the plants cut above or below the ground is destroyed, in con- 

 sequence of which whole fields have not unfrequently to be re- 

 planted in the month of May." — Ure, loc. cit. p. 105. 



" Another description of caterpillar, hurtful to the cotton 

 plant, is one which continues either buried in, or crawling on the 

 surface of the ground, it being incapable of climbing. The 

 ravages of this insect are consequently at an end, after the first 

 week following the appearance of the plant above the ground. 

 The ravages of these insects are said by Mr. Edwards to be so 

 great, that it is necessary every third or fourth year to resort 

 to fresh land in order to avoid them." — Tropical Agriculturist, 

 p. 26. 



The Cotton Bug, of Guiana. — This insect is alluded to by Mr. 

 Porter, as follows : — " It is a concomitant of this disease (the 

 blast), that the plant is attacked by a peculiar kind of insect 

 called the cotton bug, which infests the pods by swarms, and 

 contributes greatly to the destruction of the crop ; this, which is 

 one of the effects, has sometimes been mistakenly considered as 

 a cause of the blast. The insect, which is a species of Cimex, is 

 of a scarlet colour when young. If crushed when full grown, 



