APPEIVDIX VIII. 



ANSWERS TO CIRCULAR NO. 7.* 



Saint Francisville, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, 



October 2, 1879. 

 A circular from you requesting answers to certain questions relative to tlie Cotton 

 Worm was received some months since, and my reply has been deferred to this date in 

 order to enable me to observe the worm and its depredations throughout the entire 

 season. Last year a similar circular was received from the office of the Agricultural 

 Department, to which I replied tally and specially to all the questions as far as my 

 information extended. 



1. Cotton has been grown here since this century began — eighty years — and perhaps 

 longer. I am a native, fifty-eight years old, and my family and relatives came here 

 from North Carolina in Spanish times and soon afterwards, i. e., from 1800 to 1810. 

 They always raised cotton from their first settlement here. 



2. I have no records or histories to refer to in order to answer this question fully and 

 accurately. From old settlers I have heard that the Army Worm came here before my 

 recollection — this is, before 1827 or 1828 — and destroyed the crops. I think this was 

 between 1820 and 1824. I have heard old settlers who came here from South Caro- 

 lina say that the Cotton Worm came there before 1815, and ravaged the crops. From 

 my recollection, the worms never appeared here in any great numbers after ] 828 un- 

 til 1840 or 1841. I was raised on a plantation, where I now live, my father and all of 

 my family on my father's and mother's side being large cotton planters, and my recol- 

 lection dates back to 1828 about all matters of any great moment. 



In the above year, 1840 or 1841, I returned home on a visit from school late in the 

 fall, say October, and found the cotton fields white with the open cotton and filled 

 also with Cotton Worms. In a few days they ate all the leaves from the stalks of cot- 

 ton, and then began to crawl ofi", moving like a great army, and filling the ruts and 

 washes in the roads and fields with millions of worms, which being unable to crawl 

 out died there in masses. As the worms appeared that year quite late in the season, 

 no damage was done to the cotton crop, except to make the open cotton dirty and 

 trashy from the excrements and cut leaves dropped by the worms on the cotton. 



In 1846 the worms appeared again, and that year the crops were greatly injured, 

 the worms eating the cotton up so early in the season that not more than 50 to 70 per 

 cent, of a full crop was made by planters in this section. The worms never came 

 again in sufficient numbers to attract any general notice until after the war began. 

 We heard of their appearance soon after the Federal occupation of New Orleans and 

 the lower part of the State, from the great desire to get cotton to supply the markets 

 and factories abroad and at the North and the many attempts made in that region to 

 raise cotton for that purpose. Inside of the Confederate lines, in this section, very 

 little cotton was raised during the war, the people turning their attention almost ex- 

 clusively to raising food crops. Worms appeared, however, in the small fields of cot- 

 ton raised here for several years before the war ended. Beginning with 1866, they 

 have been in this section every year since, sometimes many and again very few ; but 

 no year has passed with an eiitire absence of the worm since 1866. 



3. I do not think the coldness or mildness of the winters affects the worms here — 

 our winters are never very cold— as our latitude is too far South to permit it. We 

 have had very cold weather, for this section, many times since 1866, and the worms 

 have appeared every year, more or less. 



4. They are always worse in wet summers ; never very bad in very hot, dry sum- 

 mers. They are generally noticed first in July, and if its after progress is attended 

 by repeated rains during Julj-, August, and September, the crops are very apt to be 

 much injured, if not completely demolished. But if it remains hot and dry during the 

 above-named months, the worms never do much damage. 



* This circular is printed in the Introduction. 



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