DISEASES OF THE COTTON PLANT. 
201 
will here simply give the results of some experiments madt 
by me this season (1855) to determine whether any of 
these insects do or do not suck the sap from the bolls. In 
the month of October, several plant-bugs were caught, and 
placed singly in glass bottles, containing young and middle- 
sized bolls, and all of those hereafter described were 
observed with their piercers penetrating the bolls, and 
busily engaged sueHng out the sap. 
The Green Plant-Bu&.— (Pmtofoma 
This insect is about seven-tenths of an inch in length, 
rather broad, and of a bright-green color ; the head is 
furnished with two ocelli on the upper part; the eyes are 
brown, and the scutellum, or triangular place between the 
wing-covers, is very large and also of a green color ; the 
upper part of the body, which is flattened, is margined 
with an edge of yellow, and has a black spot on the yellow 
edge of each segment. The piercer, which is long and 
jointed, when not in use, is recurved under the thorax ; 
the antennae are five-jointed. 
An insect was described fcy Mr. Bailey, of Monticello, 
in Florida, as being very numerous in his cotton fields ; 
and his overseer informed me that he had seen it in the 
very act of piercing a boll, which he afterward cut open, 
and found that the puncture had penetrated through the 
outer shell, or case of the boll, to the cotton, and that the 
mark where the piercer had penetrated was discolored. 
Those I had in confinement certainly were frequently seen 
with their trunks inserted into bolls, and sucking the sap. 
The larva is very similar to the perfect insect in shape 
and color, but smaller in size, and is not famished with 
wings. The pupa possesses rudiments of wings only, and 
9* 
