CHAPTER XIV. 
HISTOEY OF THE LITERATUEE AND BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
HISTORY OF THE LITERATURE. 
Concerning the ravages of the chenille in the West Indies during the 
last century, we find mention in several books of travel. Daniel Mc- 
Kinnen (1802) gives an account of the appointment of a commission by 
the general assembly of the Bahamas in 1801 to investigate the causes 
of failure of the cotton crop. Bryan Edwards (1805) mentions the great 
damage done in the islands by the chenille in 1788 and 1791. Dr. Chis- 
holm (1830) * treats at length of the chenille as observed by him in British 
Guiana in 1801-'02. George E. Porter (1833), in speaking of cotton cult- 
ure in Guiana, copies much of this last-named article, as also does Dr. 
Andrew Ure (1836). 
With regard to the early appearances in the United States, we have 
been able to find no contemporaneous accounts of any value. Nothing 
worthy of mention seems to have been written until after the great 
caterpillar year of 1825. Perhaps previous to this year, perhaps later, 
a memoir upon cotton was written by Thomas Spalding, of Georgia, a 
well-known agricultural and historical writer, in which the chenille must 
have been treated at some length. We have been unable to find that 
the memoir was ever published. It was transmitted in manuscript to 
Ure and was extensively quoted by that author. It was also freely used 
by Hon. W. E. Seabrook (1811), of whose treatise we shall speak later. 
In January, 1827, Dr. C. W. Capers, of Georgia, sent specimens of the 
parent moth to Thomas Say, father of descriptive entomology in Xorth 
America. They reached the latter in November of the same year, and 
in May, 1828, his answer to Dr. Capers' letter, describing the moth as 
Noctua xylina, was published in the Southern Agriculturist (see Capers, 
1828) 3 accompanied by brief popular descriptions of the egg, larva, 
and pupa, and also by an account of the ravages of the worm from 1800 
to 1827, by Dr. Capers himself. The description, with the accompauy- 
m- correspondence, was published by Say in the New Harmony Dis- 
seminator in 1830, and was afterwards reprinted by Fitch (1857), and may 
be found in Say's collected writings (Leconte's edition, I, 360). This 
article of Dr. Capers' was the first scientific effort upon the Cotton Worm, 
* The fall titles of these works and all others designated simply by authors and 
date can be found by reference to the bibliographical list. 
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