The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-06-18
ON THE WING
Being Dissertation the Helgrammite Popular Bug
 Among Our Well Known Fishermen

1 Colonel Rushton said they were hell | ammites-because he said so, 1 be- | lieved they were, and because they | looked the part. He was talking abcut
 lot of wigglers or crawIers that hc i had in a tin bucket along with some | black mud and branch grass, which he | had brought back from Columbia
 Tenn, and I, being of an inquirirg turr | of mind, wanted to know what he, a | capitalist who could sell and buy dia-
 monds, was doing with tin bucket ot bugs He said he wanted them for 1 bait-fish bait-and that he had gotten them out of branch up in Tenne5- see.
 The word preyed on my mind, it stayed with me, I could not get rid of it. so I determined to find out what the hellgrammites were Typographical error). Having found out, and know ing that there are other ignorant per sons in the world besides myself am going to share my newly acquired Knowledge with them
 much respected person, related to me- in way, used to tell the children hen they asked her what certain word meant "Go, look in the diction- ary;' her idea being that if they took the trouble to look up a word with it's pronunciation and meaning it would be impressed on their winds arc they would not so readily forget it. There fore. I went to the dictionary and found that the meaning of hellgramm'te was given as ''The large acquatic larva of dol, c1 much used as a bait for black bass and other fish; also, an artinclal halt ln 1 imita tion of the larva.
 I had my doubts as to the cerrect- ness of the dictionary on this parrc- ular point because the same dictionary gives as the meaning of cutworm "A i larval noctuid moth of agrot1s or .e- | lated genus that comes forth at nl%h' ! and cuts off young corn, cabbage, o1 | similar plants, usually near the sur 1 face. or that climbs trees and eats tfe l buds" It may be that the cutw orm is ] the larya of a noctuid moth, but 1t sure 1 is not A moth I have squashed toe many of them, and it is he worm oi I larva and not the moth that does the 1 cutting and the climbing. Mayre l an ] mistaken. and "Larval noctuid moth means cutworm; anyhow, l decided te l look further and so went flown to thF | public library and got book on m
 sects and looked up the subject ant l this is what 1 found:
 | "Corydalis cornuta, family neu' 1 roptera Adult fly is most commonly called hellgrammite, while the larvae much used by fishermen as bait art | known as dobsons or crawlers. bu other names are often used. EIowar( | lists the following array Of names collected by Prof w. w. Bailey, whicl are applied to the larvae in Rhod 1 Island alone: Dobson, crawler, arnly conniption bug, clipper, water grlmpus l ecgelegoy bogart crock, her devil ] flipflap alligator, hojack. snake doc 1 tor, dra gon and hell diver"
 | Rhode Island is a comparativel, 1 small state having an area of orly luS i souare miles. while Alabama has 5l, 1 $40 square miles of territory, that il l to say, land area. Now, if in Rhod l Island the hellgrammite has IT names ! why. Alabama, having 473s times a
 1 much land area, is able to afford a i least 90 aliases for the said hellgram
 mite, notwithstanding which I am go 1 ing to select one of the Rhode Islan; names and stick to it. it is e nam l which, were I called upon to stant
 sponsor at a rechristening of the in