THE EGG OF THE BOLL-WOEM MOTH. 297 



when feeding upon Erytlirina. As to the string-beans, Professor Riley 

 records that it was found eating them around Kirkwood, Mo., by Miss 

 Mary Murtfeldt. 



This department has also received specimens of the boll- worm from D. 

 Landreth & Sous, of Philadelphia, as quite seriously infesting fields of 

 Lima beans. The communication accompanying may prove of interest: 



PHILADELPHIA, PA., October 31, 1879. 



SIR : By mail we send you some pods of Lima beans which have been entered, and 

 the beans partially destroyed, by a worm new to ns. 



"We bad twenty acres growing on our New Jersey farm near Burlington, and have 

 suffered a loss of 'i to 5 per cent. 



This is the first season the worm has appeared, and we send it, trusting that your 

 entomologist may be able to tell us something of its habits. 

 Eespectfully, 



D. LANDEETH & SONS. 

 Hon. W. G. LE Due, 



Commissioner of Agriculture. 



The beans sent were each pierced by one hole of an eighth of an inch 

 or more in diameter, and the contents in every case had been destroyed. 



Of other useful plants which the boll-worm occasionally feeds upon 

 we would mention pumpkins (Cucurbitapepo), as recorded by Mr. Glover 

 in the Department of Agriculture Report for 1870, p. 84, and red pep- 

 pers (Capsicum annuuni), as recorded by G. H. French in the Seventh Re- 

 port of the State Entomologist, of Illinois, p. 102. Mr. Glover also states 

 that " a young boll- worm was found in the corolla of the flower of a 

 squash, devouring the pistil and stamens." 



Mr. French also records the fact of finding what he considered to be 

 the boll-wofm in the pods of Hibiscus grandiftorus, the large flowered 

 rose mallow. 



Mrs. Treat discovered, in the course of her observations upon Heliotliis, 

 that many individuals of the first brood ate into the stems of the garden 

 flower known as Gladiolus, and not only into the stems but into the 

 flower-buds also. 



As regards its European food-plants, Professor Riley quotes from M. 

 Ch. Goureau's Insectes Nuisibles, Second Supplement, 1865, p. 132, to the 

 effect that it not only infests the ears of Indian corn, but devours also 

 the heads of hemp and the leaves of tobacco and of lucerne (Medicago 

 saliva). 



And now let us turn to the consideration of the boll- worm on cotton. 



THE EGG. 



The egg of the boll- worm moth differs in form from that of the cotton- 

 worm moth, as shown in the accompanying figure, by its much greater" 

 diameter through from top to bottom, looking, as one author aptly ex- 

 presses it, " as though molded in a tea-cup, while the cotton-worm egg 

 was molded in the saucer." The two diameters of the egg are nearly 

 equal and are about the same as the greatest diameter of the egg of 



