THE BOLL WORM FOOD-PLANTS. 
363 
bores into the pod at some one point, and never leaves until the entire 
contents are mined. Witb the common Cow-peas of the South ( Vigna 
and Dolichos, spp.), in the pods of which Heliothis is very often found 
feeding, the work is frequently done in quite a different way. The 
seeds are separated by marked fleshy partitions, and, rather than pierce 
these partitions, the worm bores through to the outside and enters 
again opposite to another pea. In the same manner it infests Wrythrina 
herbaria — a leguminous plant which grows wild through the South, more 
commonly near the coast. (See Report on Cotton Insects, Department 
of Agriculture, ls7!>, p. 206.) In Europe it is found on Lucerne (Medi- 
cafjo sativa) according to Goureau (ibid.), and upon the Chick-pea [Cioer 
arietinum) according to If. J. Fallon {Insectologie Agrioole, 1869, p. 205). 
In the latter ease the young worms feed upof the leaves and the older 
ones bore into the pod. 
C re ruin t.\<i;.i:. — A mon^ the Cucurbit acea» several useful plants are 
injured by the Iioll Worm. Clover, in 1870, records pumpkins [Gueur- 
bita j>C]x>). and Judge Johnson, iu his report tO OS, mentions melons 
[Oucumis melo) and Bummer squash [Oucurbita verrucosa), Mr. (Hover, 
as long ago as IS.jo, found the Iioll Worm feeding in the flowers of 
squash. (Glover, Patent Office Agricultural Report tor 1855, p. 100.) 
Iff ALVAcim;. — Professor French (Seventh Report of the State Ento- 
mologist 6f Illinois) reports the worm as feeding on the growing seed- 
pods of the lar^e -tlowered Pose Mallow [Hibiscus graudiflora) along 
streams in Illinois. He has recently published the fact, however, that 
the larva concerned in this injury was not Heliothis. but t Pyralid.* 
The useful Okra or (imnlio ])lant (Hibiscus esc u I cut us) is often de- 
stroyed, according to Judge Johnson, by this larva. 
OTHER FOOD-plams.— The families Iridaeea', ( on\ olvulacea\ Urti- 
cacea', R< sedacea*, (ieraniacca* each contain a single food-plant of He- 
liothis. Mrs. Treat, in her Yineland address on insects, quoted from in 
the American Wn i o m cH o cist^ [, p. 43, mentioned the Gladiolus, grown 
frequently in flower gardens, as being occasionally eaten in the spring 
by the Boll Worm. Mr. Schwarz several times found the worm, at Selma, 
Ala., feed in »■ on the green fruit of Ipomoca connnntata. He remarks: " It 
is a very cm ions sight to see this large larva with its bead imbedded in 
the comparatively small fruit of this plant." Mr. Goureau (/. c.) men- 
tions hemp (Cannabis) as one of the European food- plant 8, and Kalten- 
bach (Pflanzenfeinde, &C, ]). \-~ States that the worm lives from June 
to August on the Dyer's Mignonette (Reseda luteal). 
Within the last year the worms were received from Mr. Daniel YYilter, 
of Denver. Colo., as boring into the stems of his garden Geraniums, and 
also eating the leaves of the same plant. 
These are, so far as we have been able to ascertain, all of the food-plants 
of Heliothis urmigera yet known or at least yet recorded. Others will 
undoubtedly be found from time to time, and it is not improbable that 
the present list could be swelled into the hundreds by a diligent and 
