APPENDIX III. 
REPORT OF J. P. STELLE. 
Sir: I have the honor to .submit the following report of my experiments and obser- 
vations as a special agent of the United States Entomological Commission engaged 
in the work of investigating cotton insects under your direction : 
Having been assigned to duty in the State of Texas, I fust established my head- 
quarters at Calvert, in Robertson County, a point in the rich cotton-producing re- 
gions of the Brazos Valley, exactly on the line of 31° north latitude. It lias usually 
been understood that the Cotton Worm makes its first appearance for the season in 
Texas in the most southern counties where cotton is grown, but for this year the 
rule does not seem to have held good, as it appeared in injurious number! in Bobertaoa 
County as early as at any other place in the State. Information of its early appeals 
anno in this section influenced me in making choice of my location, ami it eventu- 
ally turned out a most fortunate choice, on account of being entirely ahove the line 
of the hea\y rains which visited Texas in the course of the summer. While the 
counties along the Lower Brazos and Colorado were being drenched with rains daily, 
Kobertson County was entirely exempt : in fact, scarcely a drop of rain fell in this re- 
gion between the 1st of July and tbo 1st of September, a circumstance greatly favor- 
ing my field-work, as will be readily seen. 
Both the Cotton Worm (Aletia rylina) and the Boll Worm (Heliothis armigera) 
appeared on tlie lowland farms along the Brazos, in what planters would term injurious 
numbers, about tin" 20th of July. The weather was quite warm at this time, and it 
continued warm throughout the season, the thermometer usually marking from 90° to 
95° Fahrenheit at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. This, with a gentle breeze from the south, 
bringing up an atmosphere from the rain-belt, heavily charged with moisture, seemed 
to give every condition favorable for a thrifty growth and quick transformation of 
the insects. As a consequence brood succeeded brood with astonishing rapidity, 
the worms spreading quickly to the uplands, and doing their work so effectually that 
by the 1st or September all the cotton fields where remedies had not been applied 
were completely stripped of their leaves, with a very large per centum of the bolls 
bored into. This cut short my operations at Calvert, and in order that I still might 
have more time for field-work, I changed my location to San Marcos, in Hays 
County, where the worms were then (.September 1) just beginning to put in an inju- 
rious appearance. Hero I remained till the 15th of October, prosecuting my labors 
under conditions reasonably favorable in every respect. 
Summing up the results of my investigations as secured in the lines laid down for 
the government of my work, I may begin with what planters in many parts of the 
South call 
COTTON BLIGHT. 
In some localities it is known as " stalk-rust," and in others as M root-rot," but cot- 
ton blight seems to be the name by which it is most generally called in Texas, and I 
think the same may bo said for a majority of the other Cotton States. 
This trouble begins in the cotton field about with the earliest appearance of blooms, 
and usually on uplands, though one occasionally meets with it in bottom plantations. 
The first indication we have of its presence is a sudden wilting of the plants, which, 
up to this time, were to all appearances as healthy aud vigorous as any in the field. 
In the morning the plants are looking all right ; in the evening their leaves are seen 
to be wilting : to-morrow evening they are blackened and dry. Usually the earliest 
attack is made upon only a few plants in a place, more commonly than otherwise 
upon a single specimen. A week later, perhaps, and one of its nearest neighbors shows 
symptoms of the blight, then another and another on till frost cuts short the growth 
of the crop, when, in many cases, it will be seen that all the plants of a spot several 
rods in extent have been ruinously blighted. The bolls that are at maturity when 
the plant dies will open and show DO particular damage, but the young bolls will dry 
up and be lost. 
