APPE]¥DIX T. 



COTTON GATEEPILLAES 11^ BEAZIL. 



By John C. Branner. 



[Extracted from a manuscript report on cotton in tlie Empire of Brazil — an account 



of investigations made by Mr. Branner and Mr. A. Koebele, during a trip made 



to Brazil in the spring of 1883, under direction of C. V. Riley.] 



HISTORICAL. 



That there were caterpillars that destroyed the leaves of the cotton plant was known 

 to the earliest settlers of Brazil. In the Eoteiro do Brazil,* written between 1570 and 

 1587, Gabriel Soares de Souza, in speaking of the kinds of caterpillars in the province 

 of Bahia, says: "^Some of them destroy the young mandioca, cotton, and rice, and 

 injure the sugar cane, and sometimes there are so many of them that the roads are 

 full of them, and they leave the ground over which they have passed clear of grass 

 and parched." 



In 1794, Dr. Manuel Arruda da Camara, naturalist in the service of the King of Por- 

 tugal, wrote, at Pernambuco, his treatise upon cotton. t In Chapter VII of this work 

 he treats of the diseases peculiar to the cotton in Brazil, and of the insects affecting 

 it. The following is what he wrote upon the caterpillar : 



* ' There are caterpillars proper to the cotton plant, which live upon its leaves, and 

 which are so voracious, and appear in such numbers in certain years, that in a few 

 days they eat up a whole cotton plantation, gnawing even the tender shoots so that 

 the plants appear to have been swept by fire. These insects go through their whole 

 metamorphosis within twenty days, a little more or less ; that is, up to the last meta- 

 morphosis, called by botanists the imago revelaia. This plague does great damage to 

 the young plants, for they eat them off almost even with the surface of the ground, be- 

 cause they find the trunk still tender. They do not fail to injure the grown plant 

 seriously also, especially when freshly flowered, for their fruit does not come to per- 

 fection, and it is difficult for them to take on new foliage. Sometimes, however, 

 when, after having eaten for some days, a heavy rain falls on them that knocks them 

 to the earth and kills them, the cotton plants put out lateral branches which produce 

 an admirable quantity of fruit, and thus they serve the purpose of a pruning. The 

 caterpillar does not generally come, save in the season of the early rains, commonly 

 called the 'first waters.' For the same reason they are called 'papillon printan- 

 ier' in Cayenne and San Domingo. If these first rains are followed by continuous 

 sunshine Or by a few li ^ht rains, these caterpillars appear in great abundance ; but 

 if tlie rains continue abundant and heavy, those that have appeared perish, and new 

 broods are prevented. On account of the close winters it is now three years since 

 they have been 8een."t 



* Revista do Instituto Historico do Brazil, 1851, p. 268. 



t Memoria sohre a Cultura dos Algodoeiroa, por Manuel Arruda da Camara. 



t In these two accounts alone we have sufficient evidence of the existence of "Cot- 

 ton Worms " in Brazil since the first settlement of the country by the Portuguese. 

 In the Department of Agriculture Report (1879) on Cotton Insects, pp. 74 and 358, a 

 writer is quoted as saying that Cotton Worms were never observed in Sao Paulo 

 prior to 1863, and that after cotton began to be extensively cultivated they appeared 

 in such numbers as to cause the culture to be nearly abandoned in 1874. 



A glance at the statistics of exportation from the province of Sao Paulo shows that 

 while cotton only began to be exported about 1864, the exports in 1873-'4 were larger 

 "than in any year before or since. The natural explanation therefore is that when the 

 planters took no interest in cotton culture, caterpillars never troubled them, but in 

 proportion as the culture grew, the ravages of these insects attracted increased atten- 

 tion from them. 



63 CONG— AP 4 . ^^^^ 



