XXX 
INTRODUCTION. 
The appropriation was limited that year, and on that account a lim- 
ited force of assistants was employed. Mr. Schwarz spent considerable 
time in the Colorado bottom, at Columbus, Tex., and later at Selma, 
Ala., with Mr. Patton. We spent some time at both places with these 
gentlemen, and visited a number of other points at which there seemed 
opportunity of gaining experience or information. But our time was 
much taken up with the office work of the Commission and with the 
preparation of Bulletin 3, or the first edition of this work. This was 
issued January 28, 1880, or within seven months from the time the Com- 
mission took charge of the work. A summary of the work of the year 
is given in the introduction to that Bulletin, from which we quote the 
following passage, by way of deserved credit to some of the earlier stu- 
dents of the Cotton Worm, and particularly to the first entomologist of 
this department, since deceased : 
The need of such an investigation, and even of a much more thorough one than the 
limited means so far appropriated therefor by Congress have permitted, is, I venture 
to believe, made apparent from the following pages. Mr. Townend Glover, during 
his earlier connection, as entomologist, with the Patent Office and the Department of 
Agriculture, gave much time to the study of the insects affecting cotton, and pub- 
lished in the Agricultural Reports for 1854 and 1855 much valuable information there 
anent, which has been a text for most subsequent writings on the subject. The 
science of entomology was then in its infancy in this country, and Mr. Glover labored 
under many difficulties in the proper determination of species and in other ways, 
which necessarily prevented that scientific accuracy and thoroughness^ which is 
desirable. Yet to his labors and those of a few Southern men like the late Thomas 
Affleck, of Brenham, Tex., and Dr. D. L. Phares, of Woodville, Miss., we owe all that 
was known and in any way reliable on the subject up to within the present decade ; 
while his copper-plate figures of the principal insects affecting the plant, of which 
figures he published in 1878 a limited number of copies for distribution at his own 
expense, are so admirable and instructive that it is cause for regret that they were 
not long since issued, with appropriate text, by the Department of which he was so 
long the entomologist. 
It may safely be said that up to 1878 scarcely any facts had been added, by direct 
observation, to those which Professor Glover had published regarding the Cotton 
Worm twenty-five years ago. 
Just before the issuing of Bulletin 3 a circular was seDt through the 
State Department to consuls and consular agents in different localities 
in Mexico, Central and South America, asking for such particulars con- 
cerning the enemies of the cotton plant as might bear upon the ques- 
tion of annual immigration. The answers to this circular were received 
too late for insertion in Bulletin 3, but they have been used in the 
preparation of Chapter IV, and will be found in full, together with the 
text of the circular letter, in Appendix VII, page [59] of this volume. 
During the year 1880, by virtue of increased means provided by 
Congress, the investigation was carried on with more vigor. Among 
temporary employes engaged for special work, Judge W. J. Jones acted 
as agent in Southern Texas, Prof. 11. W. Jones was engaged in Missis- 
sippi making extracts and decoctions of different native plants to be 
tested as insecticides, and also in making special observations on the 
