1 882.] Entomology. 327 



ENTOMOLOGY. 1 



Possible Food-plants for the Cotton- worm. — One of the 

 most interesting characteristics of the Cotton-worm is that it is so 

 strictly confined to cotton as its food-plant. All attempts hith- 

 erto made to discover additional food-plants have proved futile; 

 nor have we been able to ever make it feed successfully on other 

 plants allied to Gossypium. 2 We have, however, long felt that 

 there must be some other wild plant or plants upon which the 

 species can exist, and this belief has been all the stronger since it 

 was demonstrated two years ago from observations made by Dr. 

 P. R. Hoy, that the larva may occur in Wisconsin and conse- 

 quently out of the range of the cotton belt. 3 We have given 

 special directions to those in any way connected with the cotton- 

 worm investigation to search for such additional food-plants, but so 

 far no additional food-plant has been discovered. Last November 

 we received from Dr. J. C. Neal, of Archer, Fla., specimens of a 

 plant with eggs and newly hatched larvae which he believed to 

 be those of Aletia but which belong to an allied species— the 

 Anomis erosa Guen. The plant proved to be one of the Malvaceae 

 (Urena lobata Linn.), which is reported as quite common in that 

 part of Florida and further south, being a tall branching and 

 straggling weed with annual stems and perennial root, from 

 which new shoots arise in January. It blooms from February to 

 December, and is, in addition, a valuable fiber plant, the bark of 

 both stem and root being very strong, and used very generally 

 for whip and cording purposes. The leaves have three very con- 

 spicuous saccharine glands on the principal veins toward the leaf 

 stem, and the plant, Dr. Neal reports, is much less sensitive to 

 cold or frost than Gossypium. We find that the plant has been 

 received by Dr. Vasey, botanist of the Department of Agricul- 

 ture, from several parties in Florida, with inquiries as to the value 

 of the fiber. Urena lobata was, until very recently, not known to 

 occur in the United States. It is common on dry hill pastures al- 

 most everywhere in the West Indies and southward to Guiana and 

 Brazil, and is also reported from Western Africa, East Indies, 

 China and some of the Pacific islands. It seems to thrive very 

 well in Florida, and is likely to spread to other adjacent States. 



The Anomis erosa, the eggs and young larvae of which were 

 not uncommon on the leaves of the Urena, may be distin- 

 guished from Aletia by the paler, more translucent character of 

 both egg and larva, and by the first pair of prolegs being quite 

 obsolete, in which character it resembles the Anomis exacta that 

 affects cotton in Texas. Aletia larvae that had been fed on cotton, 



x This department is edited by Prof. C. V. Rilf.y, Washington, D. C, to whom 



communications, hooks for notice, etc., should be sent. 

 'The only partial success in this line is that mentioned in our Bulletin on the Cot- 



8 See Report on Cotton Insects, Department of Agriculture, 1879, p. 89. 



