36 REPORT 4, UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



Many fanciful remedies had also been suggested, such as soaking the 

 cotton seed in a poisonous mixture on the supposition that the egg of 

 the worm was contained in the seed 5 fall-plowing, on the supposition 

 that the pupa hibernates under ground 5 burning the cotton stalks, as 

 they were supposed to contain the eggs ; burning the nests of the web- 

 worms on trees, which were thought to harbor the Cotton Worms during 

 the winter, and many others equally fallacious. 



The use of plates with an adhesive sweet of some sort, to attract and 

 capture the moths, had been tried for some years prior to 1855, but we 

 believe that Glover was the first to publicly suggest the addition of 

 poison to the mixture. So also Glover, in his 1855 report, was the first to 

 describe a trap lantern for catching and destroying the moths. 



In 1860 the idea of poisoned sweets was elaborated by Mr. J. M. Heard 

 into a patent moth trap, which has been quite extensively used through- 

 out the South, and which is spoken of in the chapter on remedies. 



After the close of the war the planters seem to have awakened from 

 the partial apathy which they had before shown on the subject of rem- 

 edies. In Louisiana a sweep plow was invented which brushed the 

 worms from the i)lants and buried them under ground. !N"umerous 

 styles of trap lanterns were invented j solutions of cresylic soap, carbolic 

 acid, and other less ef&cacious compounds, such as decoctions of quassia 

 and infusions of China berries, were tried, but with only partial success 

 in the case of the former, and none in the case of the latter. 



It was not until 1871 that arsenic began to be used in solution. In 

 January of that year Thos. W. Mitchell, of Eichmond, Tex., obtained 

 a patent for its use against the Cotton Worm. 



In June of 1872, at the organization of the American Agricultural 

 Congress at Saint Louis, it was our privilege to deliver before the Con- 

 vention a lecture on Economic Entomology. There were many Southern 

 delegates present, and in the discussion which followed the lecture we 

 suggested, in answer to inquiries from General Wm. n. Jackson, of 

 lii^ashville, Tenn., and Dr. J. O. Wharton, of Terry, Miss., that the Paris 

 green mixture, which was proving so successful against the Colorado 

 Potato-beetle at the North, might be equally efficient against the Cot- 

 ton Worm in the South. 



In May, 1873, having in the meantime experimented with Paris green 

 upon various Lepidopterous larvae allied to the Cotton Worm, we read 

 an essay before the second meeting of the Congress at Indianapolis, in 

 which we strongly and unhesitatingly recommended the use of the 

 green for this particular insect. An abstract of the essay was published 

 in the Saint Louis Journal of Agriculture, and this was very generally 

 copied in the agricultural i)ress, especially of the South. The extensive 

 use of the green for this purpose dates in reality from this period, 

 though there is evidence that it was used in Texas and in Alabama, in 

 1872, whether as an outgrowth of our remarks at Saint Louis in June, 



