160 COTTON PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



favorable. They may have been destroyed by some of the 

 ichneumoniadae family, perhaps the white oblong dots we saw 

 on them. I never saw them on first brood or their eggs. 

 But this is all hypothesis. 



Another reason why they do not damage the Tennessee 

 planter so much is, that he plants and grows corn all the 

 season, and the moth lays her eggs on corn in preference 

 to cotton. We will see the difference between two broods 

 and three. Say you have 200 moths to come out, one-half 

 are males : we take 100 females at 700 eggs each, say 

 70,000 caterpillars the first generation ; 24,500,000 the second ; 

 now sum them up to the third, deducting half for males, and 

 we have the enormous sum of (if I have not miscalculated) 

 8,575,000,000. This insect hybernates in the chrysalis state 

 in the ground. 



The larva or caterpillar, when full-grown, will measure 

 from one and one-half to one and three-quarter inches in 

 length, it looks to a superficial observer brown, pale yellow 

 and light green, though it has eight longitudinal streaks of 

 white, brown and green, with one or two dots on each seg- 

 ment of the body along the lowest streak ; it is smooth, shin- 

 ing, naked, with a few hairs on each segment of the body. 

 They are of a cylindrical form, tapering a little at each end, 

 rather thick in proportion to their length, legs six before, 

 eight central, and two anal. Head brown, smaller than body, 

 oval. I know of no effectual means of preventing the ravages 

 of this insect, but that the remedy is worse than the disease. 

 Now, if we were to plant no corn (zea mays), we might get 

 entirely clear, perhaps, of this insect ; but more anon. 

 Jackson, Miss., July, 1850. JOHN W. BODDIE. 



