EXPERIMENT.- ON THE COTTON WORM. 5*3 
After the 1st of October, being engaged in geological work, it 
my fortune to travel eastward and soath ward ; yon may believe I<li<l not 
forget theAletia. It may beof interest to record tin- fact forced opoo 
me that, after six or eight miles to the east of the Mississippi Central 
Railroad, I found no more cotton worm north of the Tallahatchie liiver. 
I do not say none were there, because people take so little trouble to 
publish facts of the kind, but it does seem highly improbable, or I 
would have seen or heard of them. All that was peculiar, that might 
have acted as a barrier, was the unbroken line of forest, aevei 
than one or two miles in width, constituting the growth* of the river 
bottom. As soon as I passed south of this hairier, at New Albany 
(some 40 miles east . I got into the paradise of cotton worms. They 
were everywhere, and increased in their pernicious effects as I ad- 
vanced south. Vet not before I reached the middle belt of conn 
did I rind farmers estimating' the damage as anything considerable. 
I cannot close this rambling, garrulous communication without a 
word about my old friends the Heliothids. They were exceedingly nu- 
merous in gardens and corn during the summer, but comparatively light 
on cotton. Probably this happened from there being a great deal of 
late corn, and because cotton was also late. Yet I satisfied many farm- 
ers that the damage done to what they call the middle crop early in Au- 
gust was beyond calculation. Not for this, though, have 1 referred to 
them, but to question the utility of lights to attract and destroy them, 
so commonly recommended in agricultural papers. At my sorghum 
camp I never saw a single Heliothis; not because there were none in 
the tields and woods. The worms of all ages could be found in the 
corn, whether hard, or late and young, atid many in the cotton: not 
so numerous as they had been in duly and August, but during the whole 
of September the flies could be found in the cotton tields. I have 
watched them by the hour slowly flitting from plant to plant, from 
about -f p. in. till dark, capriciously tasting the secretions of nectar, 
or dropping an egg in a bud or square; but after dark 1 never was able 
to rind one. on the wing or at rest. 1 had often noticed before that, 
though my window opened low. and into the garden infested with these 
moths, it was not common for one of them to come to the light. 
And. apropos to the question of their food plants. I think 1 can add 
to the list the tree Qercis canadensis for tin' early spring, and among late 
summer and fall plants the varieties o( Penstemon^ so abundant in our 
woods. I did not verify my worm by rearing it to the imago in either 
case: but surely 1 cannot be mistaken in the larva and his manner of 
work. Besides, dining the latter part of the summer and fall 1 have 
frequently found the moth, in the woods, flying most commonly about 
different species o\' the low herbaceous Scrophularacite. Once I found 
the worm if not greatly deceived) nipping out the ton bud of a Pel 
nion. And I am now disposed to think that budded -that is. 
with the top. when about to shoot up to bloom, eaten out — was Uebotlus' 
