APPENDIX I REPORTS OF OBSERVERS. 355 



THE MOTH. 



The moths that issue from the surviving chrysalids are doubtless the progenitors of 

 our first brood of larvae, reproducing slowly until favored by propitious circumstances. 

 Being of the owlet family, and flying only at dusk and at night, the study of its habits 

 is rendered very difficult. From the chrysalids I obtained a number which I kept in 

 confinement. They were supplied with sweets, and ate voraciously ; indeed, it was 

 interesting to see with what adroitness they projected their suction-tubes and ma- 

 neuvered its patulous end in the molasses as it trickled down the jar. They laid their 

 eggs abundantly on the sides of the jar and on the muslin covering of the top, but 

 none survived the twenty-second day. They commenced dying on the fifteenth day, 

 and by the twenty-second all were dead. This was in September. In October and 

 November they did not live so long. 



As we have good reason to believe that each generation proceeds from the moth of 

 the immediately preceding generation, and from experiment and observation I am 

 forced to the conclusion that the moth does not survive its generation, I bred them, 

 and they were in cotton-fields all around me ; but since the 1st of December, though 

 diligently searching, I have been unable to find a living moth. Throughout the season 

 I have been trying to find out what it feeds upon, knowing its fondness for sweets in 

 confinement, but without success. 



Learning from Professor Riley of his discovery that the moth visited the plant to 

 feed upon a sweet which exudes from a notable gland on the middle rib of the cotton 

 leaf, I watched often, hoping to detect them in the act of sucking, but without suc- 

 cess. The establishment of this fact and the secretion of this sweet at a certain stage 

 of maturity of the plant, and the further fact that this secretion is more active at 

 night, as vegetable physiology would induce us to suppose, would throw a flood of light 

 upon the history and habits of the insect. As an instance of the effect of light and its 

 fondness for sweets, I will mention what a neighbor told me, and for which, to a great 

 extent, I had ocular demonstration. He was engaged in boiling sirup from the first of 

 September to the last of Uctober. His yard, where his evaporating-pan was, opened 

 upon a field of GO or 80 acres of cotton. He each morning found his pan covered with 

 moths, and from first to last thought he had emptied out one bushel of moths, 

 n-iy the effect of 1" 



had not used them had been badly damaged. I experimented with poisoned sweets, 

 using salicylic acid and molasses and other poisons and sweets, and though fatal to 

 moths it was so, likewise, to birds and innocuous insects. Humanity here enters a plea 

 that should not be ignored by avarice. Lights and simple sweets would destroy num- 

 bers without injury to others. For the worm or larva some arsenical preparation, and 

 as far as my knowlege goes that of Preston and Robira, called the " Texas Cotton- 

 Worm Destroyer," is the best before the public. This is used by pumping it on the 

 cotton. If a cheap and effective machine could be invented for its thorough applica- 

 tion the worm might be exterminated, but the trouble and expense and the prejudice 

 against the use of poisons would preclude general use. 



EXPERIMENTS. 



My experiments during the last season were entirely of an agricultural character 

 and were made with a view to test my own theory. They were not initial, for I had 

 practiced them during the last thirteen years, and could anticipate the result from 

 former experience. 



I selected various fields, some undulating, some bottom land, and others hillside. 

 In some cases sandy, in others loamy, and in others clayey. In all cases the work was 

 done where there was no appearance of moth or worm. The work was sometimes done 

 with the bar-plow and sometimes with the solid sweep. 



Case 1. Solid sweep used July 25, second day after rain ; condition of land tillable, 

 except in one low spot, the former bed of a small pond, which was then wet enough 

 to clog the sweep. Worm appeared in this spot in ten days after plowing. 



Case 2. Bar-plow used ; valley land, sandy and loamy. Ground wet, and so wet 

 that the furrow rolled over without breaking. This was on the 26th July. Grass- 

 worm appeared there in ten days. 



Case '3. Undulating land, loamy and fresh. Bar-plow used 1st of August. Soil too 

 wet to break before the plow. Worm appeared in ten or twelve days. 



Case 4. Land rich vegetable mold and sand, with some clay ; partly upland and 

 bottom. Edge of upland plowed 10th of August while wet. Bottom land too wet 

 and not plowed. In twelve days worms appeared on the plowed land ; none on the 

 unplowed. 



Case 5. Rolling land, sandy and loamy. Had plowing done on the 12th of August 

 in the bottom. Land wet, clodding before the plow; plowed part of the field. In ten 

 days worm made its appearance as far as plowing extended and no farther. 



