Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1889 — A Useful Insect. [ARTICLE]

A Useful Insect.

The greatest bane to the cottonplanter is coco grass. Where it once gets a foothold, from the time the cotton is planted till it is harvested, it is one steady fight against this active enemy; and if a rainy spell should happen to come up, and the plantation work be seriously interfered with, the coco will gain such headway that it cannot be stopped, and will smother and kill the young cotton. F. L. Maxwell of Killarney plantation, Louisiana, thinks he has solved the coco problem. A West Indian planter told him of a bug in Jamaica which showed a great predilection for the coco. Mr. Maxwell obtained from Jamaica several hundred eggs of the bug, which is known scientifically as the Spac tails vulgaris minor. Only twenty of the eggs hatched. He began operations with these. He planted the eggs in a box, raised several crops of them, and, when he thought he had enough, began planting them on the worst coco patch on his plantation, scattering them three feet apart, just as if he were planting seed. After a few weeks some of the coco began to wilt. An examination showed that the worm had burrowed down two or three feet in .the ground’ to the nut from which the coco springs, eaten it, and thus killed the plant. Since the first crop was hatched out, about the beginning of May, five crops of worms have been hatched, have laid their eggs and died, and each crop has been many fold larger than, its predecessor, until the twenty spactales have grown to many billions. In one place they have destroyed ten acres of the coco, cutting it level with the ground, burrowing to the roots, and annihilating it, but not hurting the cotton in the least. A Corsican doctor, M. de Susini, has made a sulphuric ether engine of twenty, horse power, which is expected to realize a saving of sixty-five per cent, in fuel. Scientific men in Paris who have witnessed its working are said to have reserved their opinion as to its merits until further tests have been made.