160 
DISEASES OF THE COTTON PLAOT. 
insects themselves are easily killed by frost and cold ; and 
their increase would be incalculable were it not tliat Nature 
has provided many enemies among the insect tribes to 
prevent their too rapid multiplication. Both males and 
females are said to possess wings at certain seasons ; but 
the females and young in summer appear to be wingless. 
The end of the abdomen of both sexes is provided with 
two slender tubes, rising like horns from the back, from 
which often exudes "the honey-dew," or sweet gummy 
substance, seen sticking to the upper sides of the leaves 
beneath them, and which forms the favorite food of myriads 
of ants. Although young plants are mostly attacked, yet 
I have seen old " stands " in Georgia, with their young 
shoots, completely covered with this pest as late as No- 
vember. 
The principal insects that destroy the aphides are the 
lady-bird, the lace-fly and the syrphus, all of which wagf 
incessant war upon them, and devour all they can find. 
Another fly, the ichneumon, likewise lays an egg in the 
body of the louse, which, hatching into a grub, devoiKrp 
the inside of the still living insect until it eventually dies, 
clinging to the leaf even in death, and the fly makes it? 
appearance from the old skin of the aphis. 
When old cotton-plants are suffering from the attacks 
of the louse, many planters cause their tops to be cut off" 
and burned, and by so doing partially succeed in destroy- 
ing them ; yet, when we consider that, by this method, 
many young blossoms and "forms" must likewise be 
destroyed, it must be confessed that the remedy is almost 
as bad as the disease. In a garden or green-house, a solu- 
tion of whale-oil soap, from a syringe, showered upon the 
upper and under parts of the foliage, has been used with 
much advantage ; yet, upon the extended scale of a cotton 
