ON THE COTTON WORM OF THE SOUTHERN 
STATES (ALETIA ARGILLACEA Hubner). 
BY AUG. R. GROTE. 
Tue earliest * scientific name for the cotton worm is given by 
Jacob Hübner in the second hundred of his “Supplement to the 
Collection of Exotic Lepidoptera,” dated 1822.° The moth is there 
figured in two positions under the numbers 399 and 400, and de- 
scribed under the name Aletia argillacea on page 32. Although 
the insect has subsequently received different names, this name of 
Hibner’s is the one it should in future bear. For the name 
« Anomis xylina,” now in scientific use, I am responsible. In the 
year 1864, in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of 
Philadelphia, I referred the Noctua aylina of Thomas Say to 
Hiibner’s genus Anomis, as defined by M. Guenée, and regarded 
as synonymous the Anomis bipunctina of the latter author. 
With the true type of the genus Anomis, the Anomis erosa of 
Hübner, I have since then become familiar, and I find that it 
differs structurally and generically from the cotton worm moth, 
which latter must accordingly remain under the combined: title 
originally proposed for it by Hübner. 
e different stages of Aletia, as it is found throughout the 
cotton belt of the Southern States, have been faithfully portrayed 
by Professor Townend Glover, of the Agricultural Department 
in Washington. On the Professor’s plates numerous other insect 
depredators on the cotton plant are excellently portrayed, and this 
work (I believe as yet unpublished) ought certainly to be issued by 4 
the Legislatures of the different states interested in cotton cultures 
or indeed by the General Government, and publicly distribatet a i 
that a knowledge of the economy of these parasites be MINS” 
For his manuscript work, Professor Glover has ind 
medal from the late Emperor of the French (a nati 
profuse in acknowledgment) but, if I am correctly info 
more substantial reward has as yet crowned Professor Glov oe 
i 
th 
° i of 
*I am indebted to Dr. Hagen for the bibliography of the Noctua gossypt' 9 
cius. T holt. “this to be a distinct p R from the Aletia and probably 
