THE COTTON WORM. 125 
from Bahia. Sufficient testimony to the identity of our insect 
with one destructive to the West Indian, Mexican and Brazilian 
perennial cotton, is at hand and the fact is established. In a 
classificatory point of view, the affinities of the cotton worm are 
With southern rather than northern forms of its family, as I have 
already pointed out. The conclusion to which I have come with 
regard to the cotton worm is, that it dies out every year (with its 
food plant) that it occurs in the cotton belt of the Southern States, 
and that its next appearance is the result of immigration. Testi- 
mony is at hand to show that for many years after the cultivation 
of the cotton plant was introduced into the Southern States, the 
cotton worm never appeared, The date at which it first appeared 
in Central Alabama has been differently stated to me, but it evi- 
dently but little preceded the late war. That the moth is capable 
of sustaining long and extended flight is readily proven. Pro- 
fessor Packard observed the moth off the coast of the Eastern 
States, as also Mr. Burgess. I have observed the moth in October 
in Buffalo, N. Y., as also Dr. Harvey. According to Mr. Riley 
the moth has been observed in Chicago, I presume in the Fall. 
It seems that the moth follows the coast-line northward as also 
the water courses that empty into the Gulf of Mexico. It is note- 
worthy here that the water-shed of the Ohio and Mississippi, ex- 
tends to within fifty miles of Buffalo. As an example of the 
prolonged flight of moths, I will state, that I have observed in the 
Gulf Stream, off the Carolinas and out of sight of land, in the 
month of August, large numbers of a moth, the Agrotis annexa 
of Treitschke. 
Again I have been struck by the absence of parasitie checks to 
the cotton worm in the south. I could never discover any, al- 
though such may exist. Spreading as I believe it to do, as a moth, 
the absence of peculiar parasites to the worm may be reason- 
ably accounted for. I have already and elsewhere pointed out, 
that in order to make the first brood of the cotton worm the prog- 
eny of the so-called “ hibernating” individuals (as Professor Riley 
would suppose), a period of several months has to be accounted 
for, since these “hibernating” moths could not wait till mid- 
summer to deposit their eggs; and while the cotton is young, 
and even before it is up, insect life is active, and the weather is 
warm and other vegetation fully out in the region of the South 
where I have lived. ‘here is also no reason to believe that the 
