INSECT PHYSIOLOGY THE BOLL-WORM. 159 



its second transformation takes place, and it comes out the 

 moth I have above described. 



The second brood comes out from the 15th of July to 10th 

 of August ; it now finds but little corn to go to (at least in its 

 section of country), and necessity compels it to deposit their 

 eggs on the cotton plant. Their eggs are laid- on the top bud, 

 and the bud of the end of the limbs; sometimes, when very 

 numerous and late in the season, on the leaves promiscuously. 

 If at the time of this deposit the weather is dry, and the sun 

 very hot, the ova or egg becomes abortive. Hence the phrase, 

 " no worms of a dry year." 



However, during the hottest and diyest season, enough will 

 escape to do some damage. Thousands of the eggs and young 

 larvee are destroyed by ants, and the ichneumoniadge. The 

 larva spins around it a thin web, when first hatched, for 

 protection from ants and other enemies, and will swing itself 

 by a thread, if it fall from your hand when first hatched, say 

 five or six days old sheds its skin until eight or ten days old 

 it descends from the tops of the cotton and the ends of the 

 limbs in two or three days after being hatched out, begins its 

 depredations on the forms by eating through the calyx in the 

 petal (so small is the place that yu can hardly discern it), 

 which makes the bracts or floral leaf turn yellow, and the form 

 falls off; the larva does not wait for this, but is off to another 

 and to another, until it destroys four or five, when it comes to 

 a boll into which it goes and lies concealed, if enough to feed 

 on, until the usual time of its transformation. The caterpillar 

 is sometimes killed by hot sun, while eating into a boll. 



If we have a short season, we will perhaps have but two 

 broods. This is the case in Tennessee, and sometimes in 

 North Alabama. The year 1848, I made a good crop of cot- 

 ton, but it was made after the disappearance of the caterpillar. 

 I cannot account for their disappearance, for the season was 



