WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 12/ 



was attended by many planters, bankers, and merchants. The legisla- 

 ture of the State passed a bill providing for the appointment of a 

 State Entomologist with a limited appropriation for an investigation. 



The United States Department of Agriculture, realizing that the 

 State wished to do this work, stopped its own investigations and re- 

 ferred all correspondence to the new State Entomologist of Texas. 



The spread, however, continued, and as it became certain that other 

 States were threatened the Federal Government once more took up 

 the investigation in the spring of 1901. The late W. D. Hunter was 

 appointed to head the work, and continued in charge until his lamented 

 death in October, 1925. 



Hunter and his associates, notably Dr. W. E. Hinds (now State 

 Entomologist of Louisiana) and later Dr. W. D. Pierce, built up a 

 strong organization, and very early decided, after a very large-scale 

 field demonstration, that a change of agricultural methods was neces- 

 sary. They demonstrated that, with the use of an early-maturing 

 variety of cotton and a forcing of the crop, bringing about an early har- 

 vest, and the destruction of all cotton standing in the field by the end of 

 October, damage by the weevil could be reduced to the minimum and 

 its spread greatly delayed. Little or no attention, however, was paid 

 to the recommendation. In the main, cotton continued to be planted 

 and harvested in the same old way, and the spread of the insect con- 

 tinued. It crossed into Louisiana in 1903, into Mississippi in 1907, 

 and so on year after year until, in 31 years after the crossing of the 

 Rio Grande, it had invaded practically all of the more than 600,000 

 square miles included in the so-called cotton belt. 



One who has never lived in the South cannot appreciate what this 

 meant. At the time of the weevil's advent, so large a measure of the 

 prosperity of the South depended upon this one crop that its loss 

 practically affected every industry and every individual. As it spread 

 year after year, partial paralysis followed it at first. Mortgages on 

 old plantations were foreclosed ; negro labor fled before the weevil's 

 advance ; wealthy families were reduced to comparative poverty ; 

 banks failed ; planters and speculators suicided. 



All of these things happened, and happened very many times, but 

 the spread of the weevil seemed as inexorable as fate. Louisiana made 

 a desperate stand against its entrance from Texas, but did not cause 



the appearance of the newly planted crop had special significance on account 

 of the belief that the weevils never feed on the leaves and that therefore arseni- 

 cal applications to the foliage would be valueless. These tests were the basis for 

 the recommendation of poisoning volunteer cotton, the weevil at that time being 

 limited very largely to a region of such volunteer growth. 



