The volatiles of field cotton plant at its squaring stage were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively under treatments of mechanical injury (treatment A), cotton bollworm (CBW) injury (treatment B), CBW plus CBW larva injury (treatment C), and salicylic acid (SA) inducement (treatment D). The volatiles were gathered in an automatic circle system, absorbed by Tenax-TA column, and analyzed with GC-MS system. About 30 kinds of volatiles were qualitatively identified, including terpenoids, aliphatic compounds, aromatic compounds, 3-hexanone, 2-hexanone, 3-hexanol, a-pinene, beta-pinene, beta-myrcene, propenoic acid, butyl ester, acetic acid, pentyl ester, acetic acid, butyl ester, butanoic acid, 3-methyl-, ethyl ester, benzaldehyde, acetophenone and 1, 3, 6-octatriene,3 ,7-dimethyl, etc., and a total of 10 primary volatiles were detected quantitatively. The results showed that both the kinds and the contents of the volatiles were notably higher in treatments B and C than in the control. It was noteworthy that 1, 3, 6-octatriene 3, 7-dimethyl was only found in treatments B and C, i. e., it only occurred in the cotton plants injured by CBW. There were no significant differences in the kinds and contents of the volatiles between treatment A and the control. Similar to CBW injury, SA inducement also enhanced the release of cotton plant volatiles.