44 THE BOLL WEEVIL PROBLEM. 
attracted to lights @0 any extent whatever. In one experiment a 
number of strong lanterns were placed in cotton fields in Victoria 
County, Tex. In all, 24,492 specimens of insects were captured, rep- 
resenting about 328 species. Of these, 13,113 specimens belonged to 
injurious species, 8,262 to beneficial species, and 3,111 were of a 
neutral character. Not a single boll weevil was found among all 
these specimens, notwithstanding the fact that the lights were placed 
in the midst of fields where there were millions of these insects. 
Chemical treatment of seed.—It is scarcely necessary to call atten- 
tion to the fallacy of attempting to destroy the boll weevil by soak- 
ing the seed in chemicals in a hope of making the plants that are to 
grow from them distasteful or poisonous to the insect. Any money 
expended by the farmer in following this absurd practice is entirely 
wasted. 
Other proposed remedies.—Many remedies for the destruction of the 
weevil, consisting of sprays, poisons, and fumigants or “smokes,” 
have been proposed. Hundreds of these proposed remedies have 
been carefully investigated. The claims of their advocates in prac- 
tically all cases are based upon faulty observations or careless experi- 
ments. The strong tendency of the weevil to die in confinement, 
which has been referred to, has caused many honest persons to sup- 
pose that the substances they are applying have killed it. Moreover, 
an insuperable difficulty that these special preparations have en- 
countered is the impracticability of application in the field. Hun- 
dreds of known substances will kill the weevil when brought in 
contact with it. The difficulty is to apply them in an economical 
way in the field. A striking instance of the unwarranted claims of 
some discoverers of “ remedies ” for the weevil was the case of a man 
who demonstrated the efficacy of his preparation by placing a feather 
in the bottle containing it and applying this to a weevil in his hand. 
Of course the death of the weevil was very far from a demonstration 
of the practical working of the supposed remedy. On account of the 
many difficulties in reaching the weevil and the necessity of obtain- 
ing special machinery for applications of poisons or sprays in the 
field, it is now considered, after much careful experimentation, that 
there is only the remotest hope of any such substances being of any 
practical avail whatever in the fight against the boll weevil. The 
claims made at different times of the repellent power of tobacco, 
castor-bean plants, and pepper plants against the boll weevil have no 
foundation whatever. In fact, none of these plants has the least 
effect in keeping weevils away from cotton, 
Mechanical devices—Many machines have been constructed to col- 
lect the weevils from the plants, or the bolls and squares from the 
ground. These have consisted of suction and jarring devices. Many 
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