THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



15 



States ; what would the Editor gay to it? "Would 

 he not fling it incontinently into the waste-bas- 

 ket? "Would he not cry out: " This fellow is 

 either a fool or a madman, or else he is trying 

 to poke fun at me?" At all events, the idea of 

 printing such a document in his journal would 

 be the very last thing that could possibly enter 

 his head : 



now TO DESTROY RATS— A SUGGESTION. 



Let any farmer examine those corn cribs where the 

 greatest quantity of corn is stored , and he will always 

 tiud there the greatest number of full-grown rats, and 

 also quantities of young rats of alt sizes. Now let him 

 ctosety inspect the ears of corn in sucli a corn critj, and 

 lie will assuredly notice many kernels tliat are reduced 

 to nothing but an empty shell, just as a lien's egg be- 

 comes empty after the young chiclien lias Inirst its way 

 out of it. 



I am no naturalist, consequently can not tell, but I 

 ask: Is it not possible, nay probable, tliat all the young 

 rats in the corn crib hatched out from these empty 

 shells? If so, the destruction of the wliole brood o"f 

 rats throughout the tengtli and breadth of ttie United 

 Stiites is easy. All that will be required will be to 

 scald or kitn-dry ttie corn upon every farm, before it 

 is finally cribbed. By this means every rat's egg in the 

 whole country wilt be addled, and a final stop will be 

 put to the future propagation of this peraicious anim.il . 



In former years ttie old-fashioned Sucker farmers of 

 Illinois used to let their corn stand out in tlie field all 

 ttirough the winter, and never think of gathering it till 

 it was almost time to plant the land for a second crop. 

 Then we heard little of the brown Wliarf-rat or Nor- 

 way rat. Now it has become a fixture with us. Doubt- 

 less ttiis is because formerly all the rats' eggs on the 

 corn that stood out in the open field througli tlie winter 

 froze so hard that they could never afterwards hatch 

 out; while in these inbdem times tlie corn is usually 

 gatliered and cribbed early in the autumn, and by tliis 

 means the rats' eggs are protected from tlie severity of 

 the wintry blast, and hatch out with the utmost punc- 

 tuality and precision . 



It is well known, that several years ago, when corif 

 was wortli only ten cents a bushc'l and coal was as higli 

 as fifteen cents, many Illinois farmers commonly burnt 

 com in their stoves instead of coal. Ignorant men 

 have often blamed them for so doing; but in reality 

 they should ha^e been highly commended for such con- 

 duet, instead of being, so to speak, hauled over the 

 coals for it. Can any sane man believe that these patri- 

 otic fanners burnt corn instead of coal, for the sake of 

 saving the paltry diflei-ence of five cents a bushel 

 in their fuel? No such tiling! They were burn- 

 ing IJP THE RATS' EGGS I 



Now let the reader observe the ridiculous 

 nonsense which several agi-icultural journals 

 in the South have receutly""printed and re- 

 printed on the subject of the propagation of the 

 Cottoft "worm — an insect which, on the aver- 

 age of years, destroys annually about fifty 

 million dollars' worth of cotton in the South. 

 The whole history of this species, be it observed, 

 is as well known to entomologists as that of the 

 Hog or the Sheep is to farmers, and has been 

 repeatedly explained and illustrated by Mr. 

 Glover, the Entomologist of the Agricultural 

 Department at Washington, in official docu- 

 ments published by the Government for the ben- 

 efit of the southern cotton planter. To condense 

 the whole into a nutshell: The mother Moth 

 lives through the winter. Early in the summer 



she laj's her eggs upon the leaves of the young 

 and growing cotton plant. These eggs soon 

 hatch out into young caterpillars, which devour 

 the leaves with the greatest avidity till they 

 get their full growth, when they form a cocoon 

 among the leaves, and shortly afterwards trans- 

 form into the winged moth. The same process 

 is repeated twice over during the summer, thus 

 originating three distinct broods of Cotton 

 worms, each usually more numerous than the 

 preceding, and the last the most destructive of 

 the three. Finally, the last set of moths gener- 

 ated in this manner comes out late in the au- 

 tumn, and such of them as are not destroyed by 

 hungry insect-feeders in tlie dead of the year 

 live through the winter, and renew the same 

 old cycle of changes year after year and century 

 alter century. 



One would tiiink that, in consideration 

 of the economic importance of knowing 

 something about the habits of this same Cotton 

 worm, every person connected in any way with 

 the agriculture of the South would be familiar 

 with its natural history. No such thing ! Here 

 is the balderdash that leading agricultural jour- 

 nals in Tennessee and Louisiana have just pub- 

 lished 011 this most important of all sulijects to 

 them : 



HOW TO DESTROY THE COTTON WORM— A SUG- 

 GESTION. 



Let planters examine the cotton still remaining in the 

 fields where the ravages of the caterpillar were greatest , 

 and tliey will find the branches punctured in many 

 places, resemljliug the orifice made by the passage of "a 

 very small shot. Let them break or split the limb near 

 tlie puncture, and they wilt find a small maggot or egg 

 imbedded in the pith, not exceeding an eightli of an 

 inch ill length, and not larger than a small needle. 

 They are nearly equally pointed at the ends, and so 

 hard as not to be easily broken, and wtien broken emit 

 a yellow, glutinous substance. They are nearly white 

 in color. 



I am no naturalist, consequently can not fell, but I 

 ask: Is it not possible, nay probable, that this is the 

 larvaof the fly? and if so, their dcstiuctiou is easy. In 

 former years it was custoinarv with the planters to 

 burn the stalks instead of thiosliing them, as has grown 

 in use of late. Then we heard little of the caterpillar; 

 now it has become a fixture with us. After the stalks 

 are threshed the branches are plowed in the ground, 

 where probably the process of incubation goes on until 

 the fly comes forth to subsist on what it can find, until 

 the cotton plant is in a condition to suit its rather fas- 

 tidious taste. 



The time is at hand for clearing the field for another 

 crop, and certainly no harm will be done nor much time 

 lost, if, instead of threshing the stalks, the planters 

 would pull them up and burn them, thus in course of 

 time ridding' us of a vulture which has for the past two 

 years been feeding on the vitals of our principal staple. 



Now, what can be the reason that an absurd 

 speculation on the generative economy of the 

 common Brown Eat, such as has been printed 

 above, would be laughed to scorn by every edi- 

 tor throughoutMhe laiid;~while an equally ab- 

 surd speculation on the generative economy of 

 the Cotton "Worm, has been actually printed in 



