54 BULLETIN NO. 1, DIVISION OF ENTOMOLOGY. 
and the axillary portions next the stalk, scarcely ever catches one of 
them. They are shy, and dodge around like squirrels on a tree. War 
must be made upon them by co-operation of all the gardeners of a vicinity, 
and winter, in this latitude, is the time for the campaign. The burning 
of the trash and litter on the surface before breaking up will destroy 
many. But their great asylums are the green plants so common here. 
Lettuce and many kinds of mustard grow in Mississippi during wiuter 
in the open air, and the great- southern crop of greens (collards), whether 
standing out or sheltered, fosters the bugs. But the great nursery for 
them, sorry to say, is the horseradish. Many gardens here have luxu- 
riant bunches of horseradish, giving them an air of life iu the dead of 
winter. If I can only be at home this wiuter, I shall not forget to give 
this evergreen a plentiful taste of kerosene. 
Xo cotton worms (Aletia) were heard of in this northern portion of 
the cotton region until about the 15th of August. When summoned to 
the spot, twelve or fifteen miles south, I found a second brood in full 
force : more probably this was a third. A very simple calculation 
showed that they must have been colonized there as early as the middle 
or last of July. The planter on whose lands they had first begun was 
a gentleman of uncommon intelligence, and a good, successful farmer, 
but neither he nor his tenants had noticed the worms until, as if by 
magic, they were scattered all over his fields and his neighbors'. Xo 
instance better illustrates the value of the advice you hare so often 
given to planters of the middle and northern cotton belts — to look out 
for the first patch of ragged leaves, or, better still, even before that, to 
notice for the first spotted foliage. It was not difficult to convince this 
gentleman, and even to find the spot in his field where he might at one 
time have covered the whole army with two or three tablecloths; and 
this, I think, was as early as the 1st of July. What a pity in this case, 
when I was on the inquiry and lookout for a chance to experiment. An 
ounce of Paris green or London purple or a half-pint of kerosene would 
have saved these two or three counties north of Tallahatchie River some 
thousands of dollars. 
Let me dwell on this a little longer for another reason — really impor- 
tant to these people — and that is to fix the time of the first visitation of 
the worm. When I found a small spot in this field, and, as it happened, 
at a distance from the path which traversed it, where, from its black- 
ened appearance,- one would have thought the cotton dead or eaten 
with rust, .with no leaves, and only a moderate supply of bolls at the 
bottom, it was not difficult to detect the work of Aletia, and to fix the 
date about the middle of July. The eggs, then, were laid probably as 
early as the 1st; and this was the work of one moth. She had been 
driven before the prevailing southwest winds for miles, and, weary, put 
out her whole brood, of possibly 500, on the first spot where she found 
uudisturbed repose. This is the earliest date I have ever been able to 
fix with certainty. It shows that the cotton planter even this far north 
