INSECTS INJURIOUS TO COTTON 



251 



acres, showed an increase the next season of over one-quarter 

 bale per acre as compared with fields where the stalks had been 

 left standing, the benefit being worth $14.56 per acre, or over 

 twenty-nine times the cost of the work. It is better to plow out 

 the stalks than to cut them, particularly in the far South, as the 

 stalks will frequently sprout out in the late fall and thus furnish 

 food for the late weevils, or will sprout in early spring and furnish 

 food for those first emerging from hibernation. For the same 

 reasons all volunteer cotton should be destroyed. 



It is evident that the thorough defoliation of the plants by the 

 cotton leafworm will secure much the same result as the destruc- 

 tion of the stalks, by 

 removing the food 

 supply of the weevil. 

 Planters should not 

 poison the leaf worms, 

 therefore, when they 

 appear during the lat- 

 ter part of the season 

 in fields injured by 

 the weevil, for though 

 formerly much 

 dreaded they are now 

 a great aid in pre- 

 venting the increase 

 of the weevil in fall. 

 It has been demon- 



;trfltprl that ininrAr Kxr FIG. 216. Bracon mellitor Say, one of the most im- 

 that injury by portant parasites of the b( jj weevil larvae _ much 



the weevil IS never SO enlarged. (After Hunter and Hinds, U. S. Dept. 



severe where cotton Agr ^ 



is planted after some other crop, this being due to the fact that 



the weevils do not fly far from their hibernating quarters in the 



spring. 



By hastening the maturity of the crop, injury by the weevils 

 may be avoided by making the crop before they have become 

 most abundant. Everything possible should therefore be done 

 toward hastening maturity, and this will be of importance in rela- 

 tion to the early destruction of the stalks in the fall. Land should 

 be plowed in the winter and a good seed bed prepared. Cotton 



