APPENDIX V. 
COTTON CATERPILLARS IN BRAZIL. 
By John C. Bran-nek. 
[Extracted from a manuscript report on cotton in the Empire of Brazil — an account 
of investigations made by Mr. Brainier and Mr. A. Koebele, during a trip made 
to Brazil in the spring of 1883, under direction of C. V. Riley.] 
HISTORICAL. 
That there were caterpillars that destroyed the leaves of the cotton plant was known 
to the earliest settlers of Brazil. In the Boteiro do Brazil,* written between 1")?0 and 
1587, Gabriel Soares de Souza, in speaking of the kinds of caterpillars in the province 
of Bahia, says: "Some of them destroy the young mandioca, cotton, and rice, and 
injure the sugar cane, and sometimes there are so many of them that the roads are 
full of them, and they h ave the ground over which they have passed clear of grass 
and parched." 
In 1794, Dr. Manuel Arruda da Camara, naturalist in t he service of the King of Por- 
tugal, wrote, at Pernambuco, his treatise upon cotton. t In Chapter VII of this work 
he treats of the diseases peculiar to the cotton in Brazil, and of the insects affecting 
it. The following is what ho wrote upon the caterpillar : 
"There are caterpillars proper to the cotton plant, which live upon its leaves, and 
which are so voracious, and appear in such numbers in certain years. 1 hat in a few 
days they eat up a whole cot ton plantat ion, gnawing even the tender shoots so that 
the plants appe.tr to have been swept by tire. These insects go through their whole 
metamorphosis within twenty days, a little more or less; that is, up to the last meta- 
morphosis, called by botanists the imaao revcUita. Tins plague docs great damage to 
the young plants, for they eat them on almost oven with tin- surface of the ground, be- 
cause they find the trunk still tender. They do not fail to injure the grown plant 
seriously also, especially w hen freshly llowered, for their fruit does not come to per- 
fection, and it is dillieult for them to lake on new foliage. Nunc! nnes, however, 
when, alter having eaten for some days, a heavy ram falls on them t hat knocks them 
to the earth and kills them, the cotton plants put out lateral branches which produce 
an admirable quantity of fruit, and thus they serve the purpose of a pruning. The 
caterpillar does not generally come, save in the season of the early rains, commonly 
called the 4 first waters.' For the same reason they are called 'papillon printan- 
ier' in Cayenne and San Domingo. If these first rains are followed by continuous 
sunshine or by a few li'dil rains, these caterpillars appear in great abundance; but 
if the r litis continue abundant and heavy, those that have appeared perish, and new 
broods are prevented. On account of the close winters it is now three years since 
they have been seen."t 
* Bevinta do Inntitufo Historico do Brazil, 1851, p. 268. 
t Memoria sobre a Cultura do* Algodoeiros, por Manuel Arruda da Camara. 
tin these two accounts alone we have sufficient evidence of the existence of "Cot- 
ton Worms" in Brazil since the first settlement of the country by the Portuguese. 
In the Department of Agriculture Report (1879) on Cotton Iusects, pp.74 and 358, a 
writer is quoted as saying that Cotton Worms were never observed in Sao Paulo 
prior to 1863, and that after rot ton began to be extensively cultivated they appeared 
in such numbers as to cause the culture to be nearly abandoned in 1874. 
A glance at the statistics of exportation from the province of Sao Paulo shows that 
while cotton only began to be exported about 1864, the exports in 1873-'4 were larger 
than in any year before or since. The natural explanation therefore is that when the 
planters took no interest in cotton culture, caterpillars never troubled them, but in 
proportion as the culture grew, the ravages of these insects attracted increased atten- 
tion from them. 
63 CONG— AP 4 
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