THE BOLL WORM FOOD PLANTS. 
359 
FOOD-PLANTS, OTHEK THAN COTTON * 
OORH. It has for some time been supposed that the first occasion on 
which attention was publicly called to the fact of the identity of the 
Boll Worm and the Cora Worm waa in Mr. (Hover's report upon cotton 
insects, published in the Patent Office Agricultural Keport for 1854, 
where he gives the credit to Col. B. A. Sorsby, of Columbus, Miss., in 
the following words: 
There is a striking similarity between the Boll Worm and the Corn Worm in ap- 
pearance, food, ami habits, both in the caterpillar and perfect state, which leads to 
the supposition that the Doll Worm may be the young of the Corn Worm moth, and 
the eggs deposited on the young bolls as the nearest substitute for green com, and 
placed on them only when the corn has heroine too old and hard for their food. Col. 
B.A. Sorsby, of Columbus, Miss.. ha* bred both inserts and declares them to be the 
same ; and, moreover, when, according to his advice, the corn \\ a-< carefully wormed on 
two or three plantations the Holl Worms did not make their appearance that season 
on the cotton, not withstandingon neighboring plantations they commit great ravages. 
It is desirable that so important a discovery as this should be rightly 
credited, and it was therefore with considerable interest that we read 
the following paragraph in the article on the Hull Worm in the American 
Cotton Plant* r for July, I860, by Mr. J. W. Boddie, of Jackson. Miss., 
from which we have already cjuoted : 
Thia insert in an anomaly in the Datura! history of insects, for it is much moro de- 
structive to the plant, cotton ( (lomijffUUK >. tor which it was Barer made, than to the 
one to which it naturally helongs, corn (Zia mai/n). ' 
If I am right in my supposition, this insect is the caterpillar we tind in the end of 
ean of corn, eating the silk and MUne little of the corn. This insect is at the North as 
well as at the South— in fact it is wherever the corn grows and will never depredate 
on the cotton plant save through necessity. 
The same fact of the identity of the two insects was subsequently inde- 
pendently proven and published by Dr. A. II. Zimmerman in the .1 mer- 
ican Cotton Planter for 1855, Mr. B. Sanderson, in the same journal, for 
L 858, and by the writer, in 1864, in the Prairie Parmer Annual. The first 
time Mr. (Hover expressed his belief in this identity was also in 1864, 
the previous demonstrators all having been Southern planters. 
Sufficient has already been said in the introduction concerning; the 
destrnctivenesfi of the Boll Worm to corn, ami there remains to discnSS 
here only its methods of work. In the North there are normally two 
broods which feed upon corn, and exceptionally three. The first brood 
Occasionally makes its appearance early enough to feed upon the stam- 
inate flowers, or k > tassels, n before the ears are formed. Instances of 
this are recorded by Mrs. Mary Treat, of Yineland, N. J., who writes to 
the American Entomologist, August 25, 1869, as follows: 
The other day I passed a large field of corn where tlx' depredations of this worm 
were visihle upon almost every stalk. They had done their work weeks before, eat- 
ing through tlx* leaves while they were folded around the staminate flowers before 
ike ran had hegun to make their appearance. 
•This section has been published as advance matter from this work in onr annual 
report as entomologist of the Department of Agriculture for lddl- ; 82, pp. 145-149. 
