CHAPTER XIV. 



HISTOEY OF THE LITEEATUEE ANT> BIBLIOGEAPHY. 



HISTORY OF THE LITERATURE. 



Concerning the ravages of the chenille in the West Indies during the 

 last century, we find mention in several books of travel. Daniel Mc- 

 Kinnen (1802) gives an account of the appointment of a commission by 

 the general assembly of the Bahamas in 1801 to investigate the causes 

 of failure of the cotton crop. Bryan Edwards (1805) mentions the great 

 damage done in the islands by the chenille in 1788 and 1794. Dr. Ohis- 

 holm (1830) * treats at length of the cheniUe as observed by him in British 

 Guiana in 1801-'02. George E. Porter (1833), in speaking of cotton cult- 

 ure in Guiana, copies much of this last-named article, as also does Dr. 

 Andrew Ure (1836). 



With regard to the early appearances in the United States, we have 

 been able to find no contemporaneous accounts of any value. ]N"othing 

 worthy of mention seems to have been written until after the great 

 caterpillar year of 1825. Perhaps previous to this year, perhaps later, 

 a memoir upon cotton was written by Thomas Spalding, of Georgia, a 

 well-known agricultural and historical writer, in which the chenille must 

 have been treated at some length. We have been unable to find that 

 the memoir was ever published. It was transmitted in manuscript to 

 Ure and was extensively quoted by that author. It was also freely used 

 by Hon. W. E. Seabrook (1814), of whose treatise we shall speak later. 



In January, 1827, Dr. 0. W. Capers, of Georgia, sent specimens of the 

 parent moth to Thomas Say, father of descriptive entomology in IsTorth 

 America. They reached the latter iu November of the same year, and 

 in May, 1828, his answer to Dr. Capers' letter, describing the moth as 

 Noctua xylina, was published in the SoutJiern Agriculturist (see Capers, 

 1828), accompanied by brief popular descriptions of the egg, larva, 

 and pupa, and also by an account of the ravages of the worm from 1800 

 to 1827, by Dr. Capers himself. The description, with the accompany- 

 ing correspondence, was published by Say in the New Harmony Dis- 

 seminator in 1830, and was afterwards rej)rintedby Fitch (1857), and may 

 be found in Say's collected writings (Leconte's edition, I, 369). This 

 article of Dr. Capers' was the first scientific effort upon the Cotton Worm, 



* The full titles of these works and all others designated simply by authors and 

 date can be found by reference to the bibliographical list. 

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