OF AGRICULTURE. 77 



color than those of the first. These insects appear 

 to multiply to the greatest extent in damp, cloudy 

 weather. When the older caterpillars are touched, 

 they have a habit of springing to a distance of several 

 times their length. In fifteen or twenty days after 

 the caterpillar attains its full size, it ceases to feed. 

 It then doubles down the edge of the leaf, and fastens 

 it with its own silk to the main part of the same 

 leaf, forming thereby a loosely spun cocoon. In this, 

 it transforms itself into a chrysalis, which, at first 

 green, but a short time after changes to a chesnut- 

 brown or almost black color. These worms appear 

 in successive broods, and they accomplish their cycle 

 of transformation in from twenty- one to twenty- six 

 days, according to the season. A season of moisture 

 and heat is the most favorable for their production. 

 Very dry, hot iveather, in some degree checks then- 

 ravages. 



Among the many remedies recommended for this 

 moth, fires and lights in the fields have been spoken 

 of as attracting and destroying the miller. If the 

 fence corners were cleared up and burned, and the 

 woods and ranges around each plantation were 

 burned over, as in former times, I have no doubt 

 a vast number of these insects would be destroyed, 



if not entirely exterminated. 



% 



THE BOLL- WORM. 



The egg producing the boll- worm is deposited 

 by a yellowish colored moth, during the warm 

 evenings in summer and fall. This moth may be 

 seen hovering over the tops of the cotton blooms from 

 about an hour before until an hour after sunset. It 



