I 



16 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



several of the leading agrioiiltural journals in 

 the South, and seems to meet with general at- 

 tention and approval? The reason, we take it, 

 is simply this : that the natural history of quad- 

 rupeds is pretty well understood everywhere, 

 even by children, while the natural history of 

 insects, which in reality do the farmer far more 

 injury than all the quadrupeds in the country 

 put together, is a scaled book to almost every 

 one. 



It is only necessary to add, that the "egg 

 imbedded in the pith of the branches of the cot- 

 ton plant " is manifestly, from the description 

 of the writer, that of some grasshopper belong- 

 ing to the Catydid family, or of some Flower 

 cricket (Genus CEoanthus). Now the Cotton 

 worm is generated by a Moth (or Miller), and 

 not by a Grasshopper or Cricket. Consequently 

 the mysterious egg, which has so powerfully ex- 

 ercised the imagination of this entomological 

 quidnunc, can no more produce the Cotton 

 "Worm, alias Cotton Caterpillar, alias Army 

 Worm of the South, than a lot of mud turtles' 

 eggs can generate a brood of young chickens. 



If any skeptical cotton planter doubts the 

 truth of the above statements, he has but to en- 

 close in an}' suitable vessel a lot of the wonder- 

 ful eggs spoken of above as imbedded in the 

 branches of the cotton plant ; and, our word for 

 it, he will find them to hatch out next spring 

 into lively young Grasshoppers or Crickets, 

 differing only from the full grown insect in 

 size, and in having no wings at all. 



So much for the dense ignorance on entomo- 

 logical matters that prevails in the South. We 

 shall probably soon take occasion to show, that 

 the North is not one whit behindhand in this 

 respect. . "Par nobile fratrum I" and this, when 

 translated into the vulgar tongue, means that it 

 is "which and 'tother between them" on the 

 Great Bug Question. 



Since the above was in type, we have been 

 much pleased at seeing the following paragraph 

 in the Dixie Farmer for July 23, 1868. As will 

 be noticed, it completely confirms what we 

 have asserted above, as to the parentage of the 

 supposed " Cotton worm eggs :" 



COTTON WORMS — AN EUROR CORRECTED. 



I read an article in the Dixie Farmer, last week, 

 on the preservation of the Cotton worm from one sea- 

 son to another. The writer seemed to think the eggs 

 were dejiosited in tlie old cotton stalk, but that has 

 been satisfactorily proven to be Grasshopper eggs. 



Mr . S says he has seen the Grasshoppers when they 



were depositing their eggs. Last foil Dr. Bernhard 

 put the stalks up in glass jars, and In the spring there 

 were hosts of Grasshoppers came out of them. 



GRASSHOPPERS. 



The grasshoppers, in 1868, are at least four or 

 five times as numerous, near Rock Island, 111., 

 as they have ever been known to be ; and they 

 are eating there almost everything that is green. 

 They consist \\\ nearly equal numbers of three 

 species common in that region, {Caloptenus 

 femur-rubrum, Degecr, uUclijmda ^arolina, ' 

 Linn., and Caloptenus differ entialis, Uhler, 

 MS. Near CMcago the last species seems to 

 be replaced by Caloptenus bivittatus, Say.) Not 

 a specimen of the Hateful grasshopper from the 

 Rocky Mountains (Cal. sjjretus, Uhler, AYalsh), 

 is to be met with among them. 



To give some idea of the very serious amount 

 of damage done by these insects in Iowa, we 

 will now quote the following statement from the 

 pen of Judge Grant of Davenport, Iowa : 



On the 25th and 30th of June I cut a ten-acre clover 

 field on my farm on Duck Creek; just then the hop- 

 pers were hatching; before the new buds had grown 

 they attacked them and destroyed the ten acres; and 

 they are at present working on a field of ten acres 

 which was cut June 19tli and is now in bloom. 



"^Vliile we were attending the meeting of the 

 Amei'ican Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, held at Cliicago in the first week of 

 August, we noticed grasshoppers skipping about 

 in great numbers in the public streets, even in 

 the very heart of the city, and the ladies of the 

 palatial residences in the suburbs complained 

 bitterly of their flower gardens being i-uined by 

 these little pests. Nor is the phenomenon- 

 peculiar to Illinois and Iowa, for we have our- 

 selves noticed the same state of things in Mis- 

 souri, and the agricultural papers report it as 

 almost universal throughout the West. 



It is our intention to issue, each of us for liis 

 own State, an ofiicial proclamation some time 

 in this present month of September, warning 

 these rebellious armies of grasshoppers that are 

 now ravaging the country, to disperse them- 

 selves and retire to their private homes on or 

 before January 1st, 1869. We are willing to 

 stake our scientific reputations upon the fact of 

 these pi-oclamations of ours being punctually 

 obeyed. If, however, which we can not believe, 

 these rebels should refuse to obey us, we intend 

 to issue early in January, 1869, a second pro- 

 clamation, authorizing all farmers who may 

 have been aggrieved by grasshopper foragers or 

 grasshopper "bummers," to sally forth upon the 

 enemy, horse, foot, and artillery, and extci-mi- 

 nate them without the least compunction from off 

 the face of tliis earth. 



