210 
DISEASES OF THE COTTON PLANT. 
several generations of these insects during the season, and, 
although found in rotted bolls, they are perfectly harmless 
as to the causing of disease. 
There are several other insects found in rotted bolls 
which it will be unnecessary here to describe ; for, although, 
as before stated, they are found in bolls already split open 
by the rot, or eaten into by the worm, yet they are no 
more the cause of the disease than the woodpecker is the 
cause of the death of the tree out of which it extracts the 
insects which have already accomplished its destruction. 
The Boll-Worm. — {Heliothes?) 
The egg of the boll-worm moth is generally deposited 
on the outside of the involucel, or outer calyx of the 
flower, and I have taken it from the outer calyx even of 
thi* young boll itself. It has been stated that the egg is 
laid upon the stem, which also forms the first food of the 
young worm ; but after a thorough and careful examination 
of several hundred stems, I found only one egg in this 
situation, and that, from its being upon its side instead of 
its base, had evidently been misplaced, and never hatched. 
The egg of the boll-Avorm is laid singly upon the in- 
volucel about twilight, and is of a somewhat oval shape, 
rather flattened at the top and bottom, and is formed with 
ridges on the side, which meet at the top in one common 
centre. The color is yellowish until nearly hatched, when 
it becomes darker, the young enclosed caterpillar showing 
through the translucent shell. A single boll-worm moth, 
dissected by Dr. John Gamble, of Tallahassee, contained 
at least five hundred eggs, which differed much from those 
of the cotton caterpillar moth, which are round and flat- 
tened like a turnip, of a beautiful green color, and scarcely 
