08 PESTS Oi' TriE COTTON PLANT*. 



one inch in length, measuring one and a half inches across when the 

 wings are open. It is very easy to rear and recognise; the brown 

 chrysalis, if left in a box, will yield the moth in a few days and the moth 

 cannot easily be mistaken for any other moth that lives upon cotton. 

 The moths fly about the fields in the dusk, lying hidden among the leaves 

 during the day. After coupling, the female lays eggs and the moths die. 



The whole life of this insect occupies from three to four weeks, so 

 that one brood succeeds another rapidly during the warm weather. There 

 are three broods at least in cotton before the cold weather, and as each 

 moth lays many eggs, the pest increases rapidly. With the advent of 

 the cold weather, the pest disappears. It is not known to be active 

 during the winter months either in Gujarat or in Behar. It hibernates 

 during the cold weather, reappearing with the rains or rarely before. It 

 is not, therefore, found after November and is a pest to cotton only up to 

 this month. 



The food-plants include both cotton, holly hock and " lady-finger," 

 or bhindi (Hibiscus esculentus). Possibly there are other wild plants on 

 which it can feed. As the latter plant is grown during the rains as 

 a vegetable, the moths that come out in the early weeks of the rains can 

 lay eggs on it and so there may be one or two broods before it attacks 

 the cotton. It also breeds during the hot weather if plants are available. 

 To both plants it is destructive simply from the damage caused to the 

 leaves. "Where it is abundant and strips the plants, it may prove a serious 

 pest, the full yield of cotton not being obtained. One of the common 

 parasites, a tiny black fly, lays its eggs in the caterpillars ; the eggs hatch 

 to grubs which feed on the caterpillar and finally come out, to form a 

 small egg-shaped white cocoon on the plants j the caterpillar dies and this 

 insect does much to check the increase of the caterpillar. 



Remedies. The pest is not a very easy one to destroy on cotton, and 

 the first consideration must be to prevent its occurrence as far as possible. 

 As the pest comes from bhindi, the best thing is to grow no bhindi at 

 all within reach of the cotton or to grow it in the young cotton plants and 

 use it as a trap. The indiscriminate growing of bhindi where cotton 

 is also grown is the surest way of helping the pest to attack the cotton. 

 Bhindi should either not be grown at all until November, so that the 

 J>est may have no food-plant on which to increase, or should be grown 

 carefully as a trap crop for the pest. In the latter case, if it is sown 

 between the cotton, it will come up more quickly and the caterpillars 

 will be found first upon it The caterpillars must then be destroyed 

 and the bhindi plants too, as soon as the cotton is large enough to attract 

 the moths to lay eggs. Two months or ten weeks would probably be 



