POISONED SWEETS VS. COTTON MOTHS. 257 



poisoned sugar, molasses, and vinegar. While they destroyed large quantities of the 

 insects, it did not seem to affect the numbers of worms to any extent." 



" Some years ago the planters (many of them) used tin plates made for the purpose, 

 on which was placed vinegar sweetened with sugar or molasses. Fires were also 

 made on stands in the field to attract the fly But as they have been generally 

 abandoned I suppose the results were not satisfactory." 



" Efforts made to destroy moths have all of them proved failures. None of them 

 are worth a cent." 



''But little has been accomplished. Much money has been wasted in efforts to poison 

 them." 



" Lights at night and sweetened baits have been used, but with such unsatisfactory 

 results as to be abandoned. I have known little success to follow the efforts to de- 

 stroy the moths." 



" Every effort to destroy the moth by allurement or traps are consummate failures. 

 I have experimented in trying to decoy and known others to try fires, traps, and 

 lamps at night, and every effort was worthless and a loss of time ; vinegar, molasses, 

 &c., on plates or otherwise, worth nothing." 



" The different methods have been tried to destroy the moth but all have failed." 



" But little value is attached to this method of destruction. It has only been tried 

 on a limited scale. Poisons, torches, &c., have been used with but little success." 



"Many futile and unsuccessful efforts have been made, such as poisoning and build- 

 ing fires, but all have proved to be failures." 



"I do not believe any of the methods of destruction mentioned would do any good." 



"No good has resulted from the efforts to allure and destroy the moths; no actual 

 benefit from poisoned sugar, molasses, and vinegar, and fires." 



" All efforts to destroy the moths have been useless." 



" I believe one of these plans as good as another and all of them useless." 



" Poison as ordinarily used is of little value; molasses and vinegar is less. Fires, 

 unless used by all planters, decidedly hurtful." 



" I know nothing of poisoning, as it has never been tried in this locality. Fires 

 have been tried, but without effect. One man in this neighborhood tried lamps sur- 

 rounded by small tin plates smeared with molasses. If he ever caught any I never 

 heard of it. Many people went to see the result of his experiments but nothing came 

 ofit." 



" All methods of alluring the moth by fires or sweetened substances have proved 

 futile. Many are indeed destroyed, but sufficient remains to do their destructive 

 work." 



"Some experiments made with fires show that the fires, while they attract the 

 moths, destroy but few, and fields in which fires have been kept have suffered more 

 than those adjacent in which there were no fires." 



The two most successful methods of destroying the moths that have 

 been used are the placing of poisoned solutions, sweetened to attract 

 the moths, about the cotton fields, and the lighting of fires or the-attract- 

 ing of the moths to lanterns arranged so that the moths may fly into 

 the blaze, or so that they may be destroyed in different ways, either by 

 striking the glass and falling into a sticky mixture, or by any way which 

 the invention of the planter may have prepared. It will be best to con- 

 sider these separately. 



(.) POISONED SWEETS. 



We have already shown (Chap. Ill) how the moth of the cotton-worm 

 is attracted to sweets of various sorts, as the nectar of various plants, 

 17 c i 



