Date: 3/28/99

Time: 7:35

Type: Symposium

Number: 3

Politically incorrect: The spirited debate over the armyworm, its life cycle, and science in the 1860's

*R.A. Weinzierl, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801
Contact e-mail: weinzier@uiuc.edu

Modern understanding of the life cycle of the armyworm, Pseudaletia unipuncta (Haworth) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), suggests little controversy. Partially grown larvae overwinter in soil or debris, complete development in the spring, and moths emerge to lay eggs on grasses. Two or three generations occur annually in most areas, but development continues year-around in far-southern locations. Long-distance northward migrations of moths in the spring extend the species' summer range, but this migration was not known or suggested until the early 1900s. Outbreaks of armyworms in 1847, 1857, and 1861 spurred considerable interest in a pest not well known to farmers or entomologists. Among those who researched and attempted to explain its life cycle were Asa Fitch, Benjamin Walsh, Cyrus Thomas, C.V. Riley, and, from Ohio, John Klippart. Disagreements developed, especially over the number of generations per year and the stage in which the armyworm overwintered. What stands out, however, in a review of the debate is not the entomological facts; instead it is the heated rhetoric. Walsh and Klippart exchanged some of the most caustic accusations - after two particularly misleading columns by Klippart, Walsh wrote of him, "There are few writers that are ingenious enough to display within the compass of twelve lines such outrageous garbling of another man's language, combined with such incredible ignorance of facts which are notorious to the merest tyro in entomology." Remarkably, the arguments were popular reading, as they were printed on the pages of the nation's agricultural press, including the Prairie Farmer, alongside essays on manners and the text of Abraham Lincoln's presidential speeches on the Civil War.

This abstract may not be cited or reproduced without permission from the author(s).