380 REPORT 4, UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 
A marked example of the benefit of poisoned sweets is the experience 
of Colonel Sorsby, as given in the Department of Agriculture Report for 
1855: 
We procured eighteen common-sized dinner plates, into each of which we put half 
a gill of vinegar and molasses, previously prepared in the proportion of four parts of 
the former to one of the latter. These plates were sot on small stakes or poles driven 
into the ground in the cotton-field, one to about each three acres, and reaching a little 
above the cotton-plant, with a six-inch square board tacked on top to receive the 
plate. These arrangements were made in the evening, soon after the flies had made 
their appearance; the next morning we found eighteen to thirty-five moths to each 
plate. The experiment was continued for five or six days, distributing the plates over 
the entire field, each day's success increasing, until the numbers were reduced to two 
or three moths to each plate, when it was abandoned as being no longer worthy of the 
trouble. The crop that year was but very little injured by the Boll Worm. The flie3 
were caught in their ea gerness to feed upon the mixture by alighting into it and being 
unable to escape. They were probably attracted by the odor of the preparation, the 
vinegar probably being an important agent in the matter. As the flies feed only at 
night, the plates should be visited late every evening, the insects taken out, and the 
vessels replenished as circumstances may require. I have tried the experiment with 
results equally satisfactory, and shall continue it until a better one is adopted. 
The devices which have been invented for entrapping night-flying 
moths, as well as the compound for attracting them, have already been 
discussed in Chapters X and XIII, and additional remarks upon these 
remedies will be unnecessary. 
Hand-picking. — Indiscriminate hand-picking of the later broods of 
the Boll Worm upon cotton is, of course, out of the question, but the plan 
of killing the worms of the first two or even three broods in corn is emi- 
nently practicable, and will undoubtedly save the cotton from much of 
the damage done by the later broods of the worm. On account of the 
numerous food-plants, extermination would, of course, be impossible, 
but the early corn crop contains by far the greater part of the earlier 
broods, and time and labor will be far from lost when we consider how 
great is the importance of a single individual of the first or second 
brood in view of its possible offspring. In localities where corn is not 
grown at all over a large space, as in parts of Texas, it will, we think, 
pay planters to grow small patches here and there as traps for the early 
worms. Several of the older writers on the Boll Worm have suggested 
this plan, among them Colonel Sorsby, Mr. Sanderson, and Peyton 
King; but, practical as it sounds, it seems never to have been used to 
any extent. 
We hove already shown, under the head of food -plants, how the pres- 
ence of the first brood of the worms in the young corn may be detected 
by the riddled appearance of the leaves. Similarly the individuals of 
the second and third broods may be discovered by the excrement at the 
ends of the ears, by the absence of silk, or by a waving or rippling of 
the husk in places. Now, if the plow-hands in cultivating the crop be 
instructed to watch for these signs, and, at their appearance, to stop 
and destroy the worms, or, better still, if boys be occasionally sent 
