XXX INTRODUCTION. 



The appropriation was limited that year, and on that account a lim- 

 ited force of assistants was employed. Mr. Schwarz spent considerable 

 time in the Colorado bottom, at Columbus, Tex., and later at Selma, 

 Ala., with Mr. Patton. We spent some time at both places with these 

 gentlemen, and visited a number of other points at which there seemed 

 opportunity of gaining experience or information. But our time was 

 much taken up with the office work of the Commission and with the 

 preparation of Bulletin 3, or the first edition of this work. This was 

 issued January 28, 1880, or within seven months from the time the Com- 

 mission took charire of the work. A summary of the work of the year 

 is given in the introduction to that Bulletin, from which we quote the 

 following passage, by way of deserved credit to some of the earlier stu- 

 dents of the Cotton Worm, and particularly to the first entomologist of 

 this department, since deceased : 



The need of such an investigation, and even of a much more thorough one than the 

 limited means so far appropriated therefor by Congress have permitted, is, I venture 

 to believe, made apparent from the following pages. Mr. Towuend Glover, during 

 his earlier connection, as entomologist, with the Patent Office and the Department of 

 Agriculture, gave much time to the study of the insects affecting cotton, and pub- 

 lished in the Agricultural Reports for 1854 and 1855 much valuable information there 

 anent, which has been a text for most subsequent writings on the subject. The 

 science of entomology was then in its infancy in this country, and Mr. Glover labored 

 under many difficulties in the proper determination of species and in other ways, 

 which necessarily prevented that scientific accuracy and thoroughness which is 

 desirable. Yet to his labors and those of a few Southern men like the late Thomas 

 Affleck, of Brenham, Tex., and Dr. D. L. Phares, of Woodville, Miss., we owe all that 

 was known and in any way reliable on the subject up to within the present decade ; 

 while his copper-plate figures of the principal insects affecting the plant, of which 

 figures he published in 1878 a limited number of copies for distribution at his own 

 expense, are so admirable and instructive that it is cause for regret that they were 

 not long since issued, with appropriate text, by the Department of which he was so 

 long the entomologist. 



It may safely be said that up to 1878 scarcely any facts had been added, by direct 

 observation, to those which Professor Glover had published regarding the Cotton 

 Worm twenty-five years ago. 



Just before the issuing of Bulletin 3 a circular was sent through the 

 State Department to consuls and consular agents in different localities 

 in Mexico, Central and South America, asking for such particulars con- 

 cerning the enemies of the cotton plant as might bear upon the ques- 

 tion of annual immigration. The answers to this circular were received 

 too late for insertion in Bulletin 3, but they have been used in the 

 preparation of Chapter IV, and will be found in full, together with the 

 text of the circular letter, in Appendix YII, page [59] of this volume. 



During the year 1880, by virtue of increased means provided by 

 Congress, the investigation was carried on with more vigor. Among 

 temporary employes engaged for special work. Judge W. J. Jones acted 

 as agent in Southern Texas, Prof. E. W. Jones was engaged in Missis- 

 sippi making extracts and decoctions of different native plants to be 

 tested as insecticides, and also in making special observations on the 



