THE BOLL WORM FOOD PLANTS. 359 



FOOD-PLANTS, OTHEB THAN COTTON.* 



Corn. — It has for some time been supposed that the first occasion on 

 which attention was publicly called to the fact of the identity of the 

 Boll Worm and the Corn Worm was in Mr. Glover's report upon cotton 

 insects, published in the Patent Office Agricultural Eeport for 1854, 

 where he gives the credit to Col. B. A. Sorsby, of Columbus, Miss., in 

 the following words : 



There is a striking; similarity between the Boll Worm and the Corn Worm in ap- 

 pearance, food, and habits, both in the caterpillar and perfect state, which leads to 

 the supposition that the Boll Worm may be the yonng of tlie Corn Worm moth, and 

 the egss deposited on the young bolls as the nearest substitute for green corn, and 

 placed on them only when the corn has become too old and hard for their food. Col. 

 B. A. Sorsby, of Columbus, Miss., has bred both insects and declares them to be the 

 same; and, moreover, when, according to his advice, the corn was carefully wormed on 

 two or three plantations the Boll Worms did not make their appearance that season 

 on the cotton, notwithstanding on neighboring plantations they commit great ravages. 



It is desirable that so important a discovery as this should be rightly 

 credited, and it was therefore with considerable interest that we read 

 the following paragrapli in the article on the Boll Worm in the American 

 Cotton Planter for July, 1850, by Mr. J. AT. Boddie, of Jackson, Miss., 

 from which we have already quoted : 



This insect is an anomaly in the natural history of insects, for it is much more de- 

 structive to the plant, cotton {Gossypium), for which, it was never made, than to the 

 one to which it naturally belougs, corn {Zea mays). 



If I am right in my supposition, this insect is the caterpillar we find in the end of 

 ears of corn, eating the silk and some little of the corn. This insect is at the North as 

 well as at the South — in fact it is wherever the corn grows and will never depredate 

 on the cotton plant save through necessity. 



The same fact of the identity of the two insects was subsequently inde- 

 pendently proven and published by Dr. J. H. Zimmerman in the Amer- 

 ican Cotton Planter for 1855, Mr. E. S^inderson, in the same journal, for 

 1858, and by the writer, in 1864, in the Prairie Farmer Annual. The first 

 time Mr. Glover expressed his belief in this identity was also in 1864, 

 the previous demonstrators all having been Southern planters. 



Sufficient has already been said in the introduction concerniug the 

 destructiveness of the Boll Worm to corn, and there remains to discuss 

 here only its methods of work. In the Xorth there are normally two 

 broods which feed upon corn, and exceptionally three. The first brood 

 occasionally makes its appearance early enough to feed upon the stam- 

 inate flowers, or "tassels,*' before the ears are formed. Instances of 

 this are recorded by Mrs. Mar^^ Treat, of Yineland, X. J., who writes to 

 the American Entomologist^ August 25, 1869, as follows : 



The other day I passed a large field of corn where the depredations of this worm 

 were visible upon almost every stalk. They had done their work weeks before, eat- 

 ing through the leaves while they were folded around the staminate flowers before 

 The ears hud begun to make their appearauce. 



*Tliis section has been published as adva-ce matter from this work in our annual 

 rept:rt as entomologist of the Department of Agriculture for 1881-'82, pp. 145-149. 



