INSECT PHYSIOLOGY THE BOLL-WORM. 157 



SECTION III. INSECT PHYSIOLOGY THE BOLL-WORM. 



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MR. EDITOR : I have concluded to write you an article or 

 two on the insects which are injurious to the agriculturist of 

 the South. I will begin with what is vulgarly called the bol/- 

 worm, a caterpillar, which, for the regularity of its visits and 

 length of time it remains, we may consider as fixed upon us. 

 This is decidedly the most destructive insect that feeds upon 

 the cotton plant in this climate. Insects of some sort prey 

 upon almost every species of the vegetable kingdom, and we 

 must learn the habits and natural history of insects, if we wish 

 to discover the most effectual remedies to prevent their depre- 

 dations. This insect is an anomaly in the natural history of 

 insects, for it is much more destructive to the plant, cotton 

 (gossypium), for which it was never made, than to the one to 

 which it naturally belongs, corn (zea mays']. If I am right 

 in my supposition, this insect is the caterpillar we find in the 

 end of ears of corn, eating the silk, and some little of the corn. 

 This insect is at the north as well as at the south in fact, it 

 is wherever the corn grows, and will never depredate upon the 

 cotton plant, unless through necessity. The moth of this 

 caterpillar belongs to the order Icpidoptera. The character of 

 this order is (according to the system of Dr. Leach) wings 

 four, covered with scales, tongue spiral, filiform. Linnaeus divid- 

 ed this order into three generations, papileo (butterfly), sphinx 

 (hawk-moth) and phalcena (moth), which were characterized 

 by the form of their antennae. Genus Phalaena, antennas 

 moniliform, shorter than thorax, palpi very small and very 

 hairy. Wings elliptic, equal, long. To this genus belongs 

 the group agrotidida, the larvae of which lies concealed in the 

 ground, and feed by night (as the cut-worm) ; and the group, 



