APPENDIX I REPORTS OF OBSERVERS. 361 



last visit the plants, it is probable, the ants in search of spiders, and the wasps to suck 

 the sweets secreted by the leaf and boll glands. I have seen honey-bees and species 

 of wasps thus busily engaged from day to day. 



7. 



No great attention has been paid to the destruction of the moths, lavae, and chry- 

 salides in interior Georgia, inasmuch as the insect wasnot very destructive till some ten 

 years since. On the coast and islands it was the custom of planters, many years since, 

 to burn all stubble in the cotton-fields during the winter. 



In 1872-73 the most determined attempts at destruction were made in Southern 

 Georgia with lamps and molasses for the moths. Paris green and arsenious acid for 

 the larvae, and hand-picking for the larvae and chrysalides. As samples, Capt. John 

 A. Cobb, Sumter County, writes: "I tried the caterpillar lamp, burnt over 100 of 

 them for several weeks, spent several hundred dollars in the experiment, but do not 

 believe it paid. If all my neighbors had used the lamps the result might have been 

 different. But I believe my lamps attracted more flies from the adjacent fields than 

 were killed by them." Mr. K. Burton, of Schley County, writes : " I have used plates 

 of sweetened water, fires on stumps, lanterns, caught and destroyed thousands (hav- 

 ing found 50 millers in one plate of molasses and water) with but poor success." 



Paris green mixed with flour and slippery-elm bark and arsenious acid in water, one 

 pound to the barrel, were used in Dougherty and adjoining counties in 1873. The 

 former was sifted and the latter sprinkled by hand on the cotton-plant. Alaj. R. J. 

 Bacou, of Albany, says he thereby saved a large crop of cotton, but thinks the expense 

 about equaled the value of cotton saved. 



Rev. C. S. Goulden, of Thomasville, Ga., employed women and children to collect the 

 caterpillars. They kept the plants free from worms, but the expense about equaled 

 the saving. 



Capt. G. M. Bacon, Mitchell County, encouraged the gathering of the chrysalides by 

 paying so much per quart for the pupae, free from all leaves and trash. He thus se- 

 cured and destroyed the very large quantity of 9 bushels and 27 quarts. He doubts 

 whether there was any pecuniary gain. 



J. E. WILLET. 



MAC ox, GA. 



REPORT OF WILLIAM TRELEASE, OF BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



HABITS AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



Belonging to the Lepidoptera, Aletla has a complete metamorphosis, passing through 

 four well-marked states of development, viz, egg, larva or caterpillar, pupa or chrys- 

 alis, and imago or moth. These will be considered somewhat in detail in the order in 

 which they have been mentioned, and this discussion will then be followed by some 

 general remarks concerning the number of broods which occur each year, and the way 

 in which the species is perpetuated from one year to another. 



In the section of Alabama where I studied Alctia, I found comparatively few planters 

 who knew the appearance of the egg from which the cotton caterpillar is hatched. 

 Most of them readily admitted that the reason they had never seen the egg was be- 

 cause they had never looked for it ; but occasionally one was found who emphatically 

 stated that the " cotton-fly " never lays eggs, but deposits little caterpillars on the leaf, 

 " for," he would say, " I've been about cotton a good many years, and I never saw an 

 egg, but I have seen thousands of little caterpillars." Negative evidence was all-con- 

 vincing to such men ; and their signs of disgust, when told that the men who had paid 

 most attention to this subject always found eggs, were very amusing. 



To find these eggs when there are few of them as in the early part of the season 

 is by no means an easy task ; for, until the species becomes largely represented, there 

 IB rarely more than one egg to a leaf, and perhaps only one leaf on every ninth or tenth 

 plant bears even one egg. When, however, the moths, or " flies," as planters call them, 

 are seen in large numbers about the cotton-fields, eggs may be found on nearly every 

 plant, the fewest being on stunted plants which have ceased active growth. These 

 eggs are, to the naked eye, depressed hemispheres, about as large as a small pin-head, 

 their flat surface being next the leaf. They are of a bluish-green or copperas color, 

 and this alone would make it easy to distinguish them from other eggs or plant-lice, 

 even were it not for their peculiar form. As a rule, planters see the first signs of the 

 caterpillar on the upper, tender leaves of a cotton-plant, and, without looking for the 

 eggs from which the larvae that they see were hatched, they conclude at once that the 

 eggs are laid almost exclusively on those leaves ; but, as we shall see, this is not the 

 case. In July, when the eggs were being laid from which the fourth brood of larvae 

 should emerge, I noticed that most of those that I found were deposited singly on the 

 lower surface of rather tender leaves near the top of the plant or the ends of the 



