CHAPTER XXII. 



INSECT ENEMIES OF THE COTTON PLANT 



You have heard about some of the troubles that 

 come to the cotton farmer through the depreda- 

 tions of insects; maybe you have been troubled 

 yourself; if so, you are altogether familiar with 

 trouble of the real and true sort. But you, in those 

 regions where the plague has not yet come, you had 

 better go out to meet the foe, ere he come, rather 

 than delay the battle until the enemy is upon you. 

 For in either case you face a foe of no uncommon 

 kind, determined, aggressive, often defeated, but 

 so undaunted by defeat that it keeps on, usually 

 winning in the end. Such, at least, has been our 

 experience with the Mexican Boll Weevil. Slowly 

 at first it approached, merely selecting a place for 

 camp; but that first camp became really a fort, 

 and in all directions its outrunners have gone, gain- 

 ing in numbers, until to-day their aggressiveness 

 and power threaten the whole Cotton Belt. 



I. THE MEXICAN COTTON BOLL WEEVIL 



Monclova, Mexico, produced considerable cot- 

 ton in the early half of the last century; from some- 

 where, in some direction, came the insect of this 

 story. How long it encamped around this little 

 town we do not know, but sometime between 1860 



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