HELIOTHIS VS. TOMATOES. 295 



fed them on corn, and in no case did the change of diet appear to affect the health of 

 the caterpillars in the least, as they went through all their transformations in exactly 

 the same manner, and when the perfect moths made their appearance they could not 

 be distinguished from each other, although I may here observe that even from the 

 same brood of caterpillars the perfect moths vary considerably in size, color, and 

 markings. 



Professor Eiley, inliis Third Missouri Entomological Report (1871), 

 again states the case as follows : 



The "boll- worm" has become a by-word in all the Southern cotton-growing States, 

 and the " cotton-worm" is a like familiar term in those States, as well as in many 

 other parts of the Union ; bnt few persons suspect that these two worms, the one 

 feeding on the corn, tha other on the cotton-boll, are identically the same insect, pro- 

 ducing exactly the same species of moth. But such is the fact, as I myself first ex- 

 perimentally proved in 1854. 



The consideration of the boll- worm in corn is inseparably connected 

 with the consideration of its work in cotton, so little more need be said 

 here of its methods of work. In those corn States which do not grow 

 cotton, it is greatly dreaded. Whole crops are ruined in Kansas, Ken- 

 tucky, South Illinois, and Missouri, and scarcely a year passes without 

 much damage being done. 



According to Eiley, there are two broods of the worms a year in those 

 States, and very early and very late corn fare the worst, the intermedi- 

 ate varieties usually escaping severe injury. In seasons of protracted 

 length, a third brood is sometimes produced, which, for want of other 

 food, lives upon the hard kernels of well-ripened ears. Mrs. Treat has 

 shown that an early brood in New Jersey bores into the stalks of corn, 

 and also eats through the leaves surrounding the staminate flowers 

 before the ears had begun to make their appearance. This would argue 

 perhaps three broods a year north, making the exceptional late brood of 

 which Professor Eiley speaks a fourth. The so-called "bud-worms" of 

 the Southern corn crop are nothing but this same early brood of 

 Heliothis, having almost precisely similar habits to those observed in 

 New Jersey by Mrs. Treat. 



In the role of a tomato- worm, Heliothis has done a great deal of dam- 

 age. In Maryland, in 1869, according to Mr. Glover, these worms did 

 great injury to the tomato-crop, eating alike the ripe and the unripe 

 fruit, gnawing great holes in them and rendering them unfit for market 

 use. One worm would sometimes entirely ruin a number of tomatoes on 

 one plant alone. Concerning this taste of the boll- worm, Mr. Eiley says : 



This glutton is not even satisfied with ravaging these two great staples of the 

 country, cotton and corn, but, as I discovered in 1867, it voraciously attacks the 

 tomato in South Illinois, eating into the green fruit, and thereby causing such fruit 

 to rot. In this manner it often causes serious loss to the tomato-grower, and it may 

 justly be considered the worst enemy to the tomato in that section of the country. 



In the American Entomologist, ii, 172, we find the following inter- 

 esting statement : 



We learn from a recent number of Scientific Opinion that, at a late meeting of the 

 London Entomological Society, Mr. Jenner Weir exhibited specimens of pur cotton 

 boll-worm moth (Heliothis armigera, Hiibn.) which were bred from larvae which fed on 



