DISEASES OF THE COTTON PLANT. 
231 
down its feet apparently in the same careful manner as a 
pointer when approaching his game. When near enough 
to make the fatal dart, it plunges its piercer into the 
unfortunate caterpillar, and deliberately sucks out its 
juices. A small specimen experimented with, was placed 
in a box with ten caterpillars, all of which it destroyed in 
the space of five hours. 
The Ichneumon YhY.— {Ichneumon ?) 
An ichneumon fly was found in the cotton fields near 
Columbus, in Geoi-gia, busily employed in search of some 
caterpillar in the body of which to deposit its eggs, as is 
generally the habit of this class of flies. The eggs being 
hatched within the caterpillar, the larvae devour the fatty 
substance, carefully avoiding all the vital parts, until they 
are fully grown, when the caterpillar, having in the mean 
time changed into a chrysalis, with the devouring larvae m 
its interior, the life of its unresisting victim is destroyed, 
and the grubs change into pupae, and eventually emerge 
from the chrysalis skin perfect ichneumon flies, to deposit 
their eggs in other caterpillars. 
These insects are generally seen running about plants 
infested with caterpillars or worms, continually jerking 
their wings, and anxiously searching in every cranny and 
crevice in quest of a subject, in which to form the nest 
and provide food for their young. 
The circumstance of this fly's coming from the skin or 
case of the moth, or butterfly, is the cause of the mistakes 
so often made by persons not well versed in natural his- 
tory ; for, when a caterpillar is confined in a glass, and 
after the change to a chrysalis has taken place, when the 
real moth is expected to come out, and this fly makes its 
