THE COTTON BOLLWORM 
{Heliothis obsoleta Fabricius. ) 
CLASSIFICATION AND SYNONOMY. 
The adult of the bollworm is a moth belonging- to the family Noc 
tuiclai, division Trilid^. Sir G. F. Hampson, in his Catalogue of 
Lepidoptera Phala3na3 in the British Museum (1903), places the species 
in the subfamily Agrotinse. Doctor Dyar, however, in his List of 
North American Lepidoptera,^' follows Dr. J. B. Smith in assigning 
this species to the subfamily Noctuin^. 
The genus Heliothis was founded by Ochsenheimer in 1810 in his 
Schmetterlinge von Europa, while the species had been described in 
1793 by Fabricius in his Entomologia Systematica under the name 
BoiTibyx obsoleta. Hiibner in 1796 designated the insect in his Samm- 
lung Europaischer Schmetterlinge as Noctua armigera. Owing to its 
great variation in color and markings, Heliothis ohsoleta has at various 
subsequent times been described as new, and it has therefore a some- 
what extended synonomy, as follows: 
Bomhyx obsoleta Fab., Ent. Syst., 3, I, p. 456, 1793. 
Noctua armigera Hlibn., Samm. Eur. Schmett., p. 370, 1796. 
PhaUvna zea Boddie, Am. Cotton Planter, July (?) 1850. 
Heliothis pulverosa Walk., Brit. Mus. Cat., XI, p. 688, 1857. 
Heliothis conferta Walk., Brit. Mus. Cat., XI, p. 690, 1857. 
Thalpophila rubrescens Walk., Brit. Mus. Cat., XV, p. 1681, 1858. 
Heliothis uniformis Wllgrn., Wien. Ent. Monatsschr., IV, p. 171, 1860. 
UeliotJiis punctigera Wllgrn., Wien. Ent. Monatsschr., IV, p. 171, I860. 
Heliothis umbrosus Grote, Proc. Ent. Soc. Phila., I, p. 219, 1863. 
Hdiothis sucdnea Moore, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, p. 443, 1881. 
Heliothis interjacens Grote, Bui. Brooklyn Ent. Soc, III, p. 30, 1882. 
The original description of Bomhyx obsoleta by Fabricius^ is as 
follows: 
B. alls defl»xisflavescentibus: macula media strigaquepostica obsoleta obscurioribus. 
Habitat in Vmericse meridionalis Insulis Dom. Smidt. 
«Bul. 52, U. S. National Museum, p. 185, 190^ ^'Ent. Syst., 3, I, p. 456, 1793. 
