4 REPORT 4, UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 
statement, also furnished by the statistician, which placed the amount 
of damage at possibly 500,000 bales in years of insect prevalence. This, 
at $50 a bale, would be $25,000,000, also closely approximating our es- 
timate of the damage in worst years. The estimate of price at $50 a 
bale for the fourteen years succeeding the war is low rather than high, 
as the plantation prices between 1860 and 1S70 ranged from $180 down 
to $G0. 
That the damage was equally great before the war there is no reason 
to doubt, for while severe visitations have, perhaps, been more frequent 
since that time, the injury has been greatly diminished by the use of 
Paris green and other arsenical poisons since the year 1873. 
The subsidiary table of losses from the worm for the year 1881 illus- 
trates this point quite well : 
Loss of cotton by worms as reported in 1881. 
State*. 
St 
I 2 
Loss. 
Total, per 
census. 
Loh. 
Alabama , 
Arkansas. 
Florida , 
Georgia , 
Louisiana , 
Mississippi 
Missouri 
North Carolina 
South Carolina 
Tennessee 
Texas 
Virginia 
Bait*. 
51,349 
15, 055 
4, 077 
20, 958 
29,649 
38, 111 
204 
10, 233 
1,374 
22,472 
Bale*. 
509, 816 
407, 342 
29, 623 
582, 332 
273, 356 
683, 763 
16, 135 
346, 931 
413,943 
146, 150 
561,778 
7,800 
Per cent 
10.1 
3.7 
13.8 
3.6 
10.8 
6.5 
0.1 
2.5 
0.9 
4 
Total 
193, 482 
3, 878, 769 
Total cotton prndnred. 6,589.000 hale* : total cotton produced in counties reporting -worm, 3,878.798 
bales, or 5tf.9 ot the whole crop. This would leave on the basis of the whole crop a loss of only 2. 9+%, 
or a money loss of $*,706.690, calculating on $45 the bale, or $9,674,100 ou the former basis of $50. W© 
would especially call attention to the great reduction in the percentage of losa from 17.2 to 2.9+. 
