90 COTTOX CULTURE. 



some will escape the paddle and fail to get into the molas- 

 ses. Fortunately the places where the mischievous crea- 

 tures lay their eggs, are easily found. She cuts the mid-rib 

 or main fibre of a leaf and bends it over, tying it down 

 with a little thread, and beneath this shelter tent deposits 

 the tiny atoms that, in ten days, become worms. They 

 are protected also by a few threads laid over them. The 

 cutting of the fibre and bending over of the leaf is a sure 

 sign that immense mischief is hatching, and if in walking 

 through a number of rows many such leaves are visible, 

 the planter should start in his whole force with cotton 

 bags, instructing them to hunt for all such leaves, pick 

 them, bring them all out, and burn them. 

 * It is impossible to predict when and where this pest 

 will appear, or whence it comes. It was not much known, 

 at least in the Southwest, before 1820. Since then it has 

 made irregular but quite too frequent visits, sometimes de- 

 stroying thousands and tens of thousands of acres. The 

 worm grows very rapidly, is of a brown color with dark 

 stripes, about an inch long, and looks some like the apple 

 tree worm that infests orchards. 



It generally occurs that a few appear and pass away 

 some time in August, and then, if nothing is done, the at- 

 tack in mass comes early in September. Where there is a 

 large crop to be saved, it would be advisable to take those 

 few pla'nts upon which worms first appear and entirely de- 

 stroy them. By this mode, the second generation of mil- 

 lers would be considerably reduced in number, if not 

 quite exterminated. 



There is something remarkable in the way in which one 

 of these countless generations provides its own destruc- 

 tion without leaving even a representative. 



The first moths that visit a crop deposit their eggs and 

 die. These eggs, in ten days, become little worms, which 

 fall to eating the leaf on which they were hatched, and as 

 they grow, consume the plant and pass to another. 



