THE WEATHER AND THE WEEVIL 93 



could be heated red-hot as though made of metal. The 

 test of the truth of this must have afforded sport to 

 many a small farmer boy. 



The plant entomologists had already worked out the 

 life history of the weevil but had gained little consola- 

 tion therefrom. It was found to spend the winter in the 

 weevil state, hibernating in stalks, weeds, underbrush, 

 and trees at the edge of cotton fields. At the touch of 

 warm spring days the weevils emerge to feed upon the 

 first bolls of volunteer cotton plants. However, they can 

 do without food from forty to ninety days after hiberna- 

 tion. They puncture the young squares both for feeding 

 and for planting their eggs within. The square usually 

 drops to the ground, and within four weeks the egg has 

 passed from larva through pupa to weevil stage. When 

 the bolls develop, the weevils lay their eggs in the in- 

 terior just as in the squares. 29 The difficulty in poisoning 

 the insects arises just here. They feed and lay their eggs 

 in the inside of the boll where no insecticide, it was 

 thought, could avail. 



The factors found to limit the damage were severe 

 winters, hot summers, and early maturing crops. Cold 

 does kill those weevils least sheltered, as experiments 

 showed. Eleven per cent survived in mild winters to only 

 2.82 per cent in severe seasons. 30 Direct, unobstructed 

 rays of a tropic sun falling on the infected square cause 

 death to immature weevils. In some experiments as high 

 as 90 per cent of the weevils in larva and pupa stages 

 have been killed. 31 Early maturing cotton simply beats 



29 The Cotton Plant, p. 337. 



80 Hubbard, Cotton and the Cotton Market, p. 39. 



Ibid., p. 41. 



