PREFACE. 



This Bulletin contains some recent notes on the Army Worm, espe- 

 cially with reference to its food-plants and to its injuries in the cranberry 

 bogs of Xew Jersey during the summer of 1882, such injury by this in- 

 sect not having been previously recorded. There are some additional 

 experiments with pyrethrum, with a view of ascertaining its effect on 

 different insects, and some notes on insects injurious to forest trees. 

 All these notes were prepared for the Annual Keport, but were neces- 

 sarily excluded for want of space. 



A report by Dr. E. H. Anderson of observations on the Cotton "Worm 

 the present summer in Southern Texas will prove interesting, as show- 

 ing what is being done in that section, and as illustrative of the per- 

 sistence of false theories long after they have been exploded. In his 

 correspondence and earlier reports Dr. Anderson has always held to 

 the view that the pupa of Aletia hibernates, and he has given in this 

 report the testimony of several planters to that effect. We publish his 

 report as it was written, as this is our rule in such cases, but we wish 

 the reader to remember that the hibernation of the chrysalis has been 

 definitely disproven, and that it is now an established fact that hiber- 

 nation takes place in the moth state, and that the pupa? which fail to 

 give forth the moth before severe frost invariably perish. 



The machine described and illustrated in our last Annual Eeport for 

 spraying cotton from below had been perfected to a large extent with- 

 out accurate field test of its practical working. We very much desired, 

 therefore, to learn whether any improvements could be made in its 

 several parts or what faults it possessed as a workiug machine, and as 

 soon as news came that the worms had begun to work around Selma, 

 Ala., Dr. Barnard was sent down with the instructions which accom- 

 pany his report. The advantages of the machine, ami they are many, 

 have already been set forth in the Annual Report for 1881-82: but the 

 report of Dr. Barnard would seem to show that considerable modi liga- 

 tion in the details, especially of attachment, is necessary. Future i \ 

 perience may lead to the abandonment of the attempt to spray cotton 

 from the ground up. on account of the irregularity of the rows in the 

 average cotton-field, and the adoption of lateral or oblique spraying 

 from nozzles that do not drag entirely on the ground, but hang some 

 inches above it. The objection which the average cotton-field offers 

 will not hold so strongly in case of a crop of potatoes, where the plants 

 are much lower and in much more uniformly-spaced rows. The results 

 of Dr. Barnard's fnrthei experiments show that the objections to the 



