STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
791 
TOBACCO-WORM. PAnABITB’S COCOONS MISTAKEN FOR BOOS. ITS ^ APID INCREASE. 
issue. It is not rare, therefore, to meet with a worm which is thus burthened 
and shackled; and they are justly regarded as great curiosities. Correspond¬ 
ents have frequently sent me examples of this kind; some of them suppos¬ 
ing in the fullest confidence that the little cocoons adhering to the back 
of the worm were eggs which the worm had laid, thus demonstrating, as 
it was thought, that the statements made in these Reports were erroneous, 
that it is only in their perfect and never in their hvrva state that insects 
produce eggs. This is an error into which every one who is not acquainted 
with insects and their wonderful habits and transformations will be very 
apt to fall, the shape, color and size of these cocoons being so much like 
eggs which a large worm like this might be expected to generate. And it 
shows in a strong light how important it is that our population should be 
correctly informed and measurably intelligent in this science. For a person 
destroying one of these worms will be particularly careful to also destroy 
all these supposed eggs; deeming that in each one of them he in effect 
destroys another worm; instead of which he hereby protects and insures 
the upgrowth of another worm—thus doing the very thing which he is aim¬ 
ing to prevent! 
Of the hundred flies which are bred from one of these Ichneumonized 
tobacco-worms, we may assume that fifty at least will on an average be 
females, to destroy fifty more worms. We thus see what efficient agents 
these insects are in checking the increase of this moth, and what an 
important service they hereby render us. Indeed, when we recur to the 
fact that these parasites attain their growth in a space of time so very 
much shorter than does the tobacco-worm, whereby there is probably two 
generations of them to one of the latter, it will appear that the parasites 
issuing from a single Ichneumonized worm will suffice to destroy two 
thousand and five hundred other worms within the time that one brood of 
these worms is growing up to maturity. They would therefore speedily 
exterminate these worms from existence, were they permitted to go on 
multiplying themselves without any check. And they are so well secreted 
and protected that there would seem to be little risk ot their being dis¬ 
covered and destroyed by any enemy. For during their larva state, when 
they are soft and tender and without feet or any other means of defence or 
escape, they are lodged within the body of the tobacco-worm where they 
are secure from harm : and when they issue therefrom they immediately 
inclose themselves in tough paper-like cocoons, in which they lie hid until 
they have acquired wings wherewith to fly away from any danger which 
menaces them. Thus they would seem to be protected and safe from 
injury. Yet the artifice of enclosing themselves in cocoons fails to procure 
them immunity. Another minute insect has been created and endowed 
with the sagacity to discover them in the little pods in which they liido 
themselves, and there this creature metes out to them the same treatment 
which the tobacco-worm receives from them. Thus the tobacco-worm 
does not die unavenged. The lingering, miserable death which it has suf¬ 
fered, its enemies, as if by an act of retributive justice, are doomed to 
undergo in their turn. 
