The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-08-28
POISON BY the TON
BEING SHIPPED TO COTTON RAILS
ING DISTRICTS TO MAKE
WAR ON CATERPILLARS.
PARIS GREEN BEING sPRINKLED
BROADCAST OVER COTTON FIELDS.

--n5taE $40 ~
This Effective Remedy f6F the pests
Is Being Used Throughout the
Cotton Belt, and Prompt Action
on the Part of Planters VIII Save
Large Areas Where Disaster Was
Threatened by the Little Pests.
How the Remedy liz Applied.
Hundreds of pounds of paris green
have been shipped from Savannah in
the last few weeks to interior towns,
much Of it through the orders of COM
mission merchants. This means that
the dreaded caterpillar is getting in
his work in the cotton fields. The
shipments began several weeks ago
and have been increasing ever since.
1t is in recent years that Savannah
has developed as a distributing point
for commercial paris green. Most of
this article has been supplied by New
Orleans brokers. but the demands have
increased to such an extent during the
last two or three years that many
wholesale dealers are handling the
powder.
Some paris green is shipped every
year, but the shipments this year have
been larger than. ever. What poison
will be sent into the interior will be
shipped before Sept. Is, as the worms
do very little damage after that date.
How 1t Is Used.
This year the first call fer paris green
came from Florida. Then Georgia
planters commenced ordering as they
| discovered the presence of the worm,
and reports from all over the cotton
belt are to the effect that tons of 1t
are being used for the determination
of the worm. Everywhere the antidote
to the caterpillar, destruction has been
sent. The "nigger and the mule" are
shaking the green dust into the long
cotton burrows from the windward,
while the planter growls over the bills
and blesses the chemist who first dis
covered the efficacy of the arsenic conf
pound.
1t is the habit of the caterpillar, a
striped little creature, that a cotton
| planter can recognize across a planta-
ton, even If barely an inch long when
full grown, to enter the fields where
the growth is rank and where the
nSdNJ iCdNGo anu sap VI the
late summer are adding pounds to the
acres yield every day. This habit is
due to the foresight of the parent
moth a modest appareled brown little
affair, which. chooses the sheltered
spots for her family rearing. With
Tout apparent reason the progeny of
the parent moth will appear in guam
I titles in one spot and swarm over the
! cotton devouring the leaves, squares
rl-s.E Ill H.
frailest stalks, rapidly leaving the cot
ton stalks as tattered as the hopes of
the hackers of Shamrock Ill.
The caterpillar crosses turn rows,
climbs in and out of bitches, crosses
creeks on RATS Of his own construc-
! ton, devours boil worms, Mexican wee
| wills and all other enemies of the cot
ton planter, but more than makes uf
for these kir1dnesses byvhts own work
OF destruction All this he does il the
| planter, does not buy paris green to
| sprinkle on the plant.
The moth is thought to lay three
| sets of eggs at intervals of seven days
each. The eggs take twenty-one days
| to incubate and turn loose destroyers
upon the crop. Then, from the first
| appearance of the worm until the COM
ing of frost the planter expects a
I weekly installment of ravagers. The
! worm is combated by theiuse of paris
green, by digging trenches about the
various fields and dragging logs
through the trenches when they are
filed with worms struggling to cross
to other unconquered lands; by lighting
torches in the fields when the moths
are laying, and allowing the little pests
to kill themselves in the flames, and
tying bags Of paris green to the ends
Of a long pole and sitting the powd-
ers on the plants as negro with the
pole in front of him on a mule drives
| down the rows.