THE BOLL WORM IN EGYPT. 



By GERALD C. DUDGEON, F.E.S. 



Consulting Agriculturist to the Ministry of Agriculture 

 in Egypt; Vice-President of the International Asso- 

 ciation for Tropical Agriculture. 



PREVIOUS to 1911 the name boll worm was used in 

 Egypt exclusively in application to one species (Earias 

 insulana, Boisd.), but in the year named a new pest 

 appeared which resembled the other in its depredations 

 upon cotton bolls, and to which the name " pink boll 

 worm " has been applied to distinguish it. 



Owing to the points of difference between the two 

 species being somewhat marked it is necessary to refer 

 to each separately, and the present paper therefore deals 

 only with the common boll worm (E. insulana, Boisd.); 

 it is proposed to give an account of the pink boll worm 

 (Gelechia gossypiella, Saund.) in a subsequent paper. 



In a special article which was contributed by me to 

 the British Section of the International Association for 

 Tropical Agriculture, and which was published in The 

 Bulletin of the Imperial Institute, vol. x (1912), under 

 the title of "The Cotton Worm in Egypt," I dealt with 

 the history of the inception of cotton cultivation in Egypt 

 and the gradual increase of production. 



There was no record of the appearance of any cotton 

 pest in Egypt until after cotton had been established in 

 the country for forty years; but about that time closer 

 attention seems to have been given to the reasons for 

 the shortage of crops in some seasons which had hitherto 

 been placed to the account of water scarcity only. 



As a result of this the Earias cotton boll worm was 

 discovered, an insect which had previously been known 

 to exist in India, from which country it may have been 

 introduced, and from where it is abundantly evident the 

 pink boll worm came recently. 



The insect commonly referred to as the boll worm, 

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