CHAPTER IX. 
PREVENTIVE MEASURES. 
Mode of cultivation. — Our knowledge of the natural history of 
Aletia and the yearly recurring experience with its ravages, teach us 
that the principal and most effective means of prevention is to hasten 
the maturity of the plant, so that a portion of the crop shall be beyond 
the reach of harm from the more disastrous July and August broods of 
the worm. The importance of this subject has long since been recog- 
nized by intelligent planters, and important results have at times been 
obtained. Mr. J. G. Mathews, of Crittenden's Mills, Dale County, Ala- 
bama, writes, in answer to question 15 of the circular, as follows : " We 
have improved our cotton seed so much that our cotton is all of a month 
earlier than it was when the worm first ate us up. Last season our cot- 
ton was nearly all open in August and September." Judge Jones, of 
Virginia Point, Tex., also writes us, September 5, 1880, as follows : 
" I have been more sensibly impressed than ever before, that early 
planting and timely cultivation will give the cotton plant such a vig- 
orous and early growth as to discourage the mother moth, and will ma- 
terially retard their destructive movements. In nearly every instance 
that has fallen under my observation this season, where cotton bad an 
early start, with faithful and diligent cultivation, the injury to the plant 
and its fruit has been comparatively light, or there has been entire ex- 
emption from the worm." 
Improving the cotton seed in the direction just mentioned can be ac- 
complished principally by careful selection of early maturing varieties 
of cotton ; or by introducing seeds from more northern regions. Early 
planting is strongly to be urged in this connection, though, of course, it 
has its drawback in the risk of exceptionally late frosts. Another way 
to hasten the maturity of the crop has been suggested, viz., by planting 
the seed in hot-beds during winter, and transferring the young plants 
thus raised to the field when there is no longer danger of frost, on the 
plan adopted by Northern growers of the sweet potato. 
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