12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOLL WEEVIL CONVENTION. 



has this matter very much at heart. It is seconding you in every way pos- 

 sible, and I can assure you that whatever plan this Convention may 

 formulate will receive the co-operation of the Department of Agriculture 

 at Washington." 



The next speaker was 



PROF. H. A. MORGAN, 

 Station Entomologist. He said : 

 HOW TO PROTECT LOUISIANA AGAINST THE INVASION OF 



THE BOLL WEEVIL. 



We are confronted to-day with a problem of very difficult solution. To 

 successfully overcome, or even to retard for a few years, the entrance of 

 the Mexican boll weevil into Louisiana will require the united efforts of 

 every one interested in Louisiana's future. 



All effective preventive and remedial measures used against the inju- 

 rious insects of the world are the outcome of careful investigation and 

 study of life-cycles and habits and of the conditions peculiar to the 

 locality where these remedies are put into operation. Unless the work 

 against the weevil is based upon all the known facts of its habits and 

 development, and upon the conditions peculiar to the section of country 

 where the warfare is to be carried on, the results will be disappointing and 

 harmful. 



In order to understand any merit which the suggestions contained in 

 this paper may possess, a short account of the development of the Mexi- 

 can cotton boll weevil and a statement of some of its more important 

 habits will here be given. 



The weevil belongs to that division of insects which have complete 

 metamorphoses i.e., there are four stages in the existence of each weevil, 

 viz: the egg, the grub or worm stage, the pupa, sometimes called "the 

 kicker," stage, and finally the adult or sexually mature form the weevil. 

 The adults, or weevils, live through the winter among material of various- 

 kinds. Grass, leaves, bark of trees and trash of any kind in the cotton 

 field or in close proximity to it, offer suitable hibernating quarters. That 

 weevils do not migrate far is clearly indicated in the great saving to a 

 cotton crop where fall plowing of all infected cotton fields is practiced 

 after the cotton stalks and other trash have been raked up and thoroughly 

 burned. The weevils that survive the hibernating period emerge from 

 winter quarters in the spring arid feed upon volunteer or planted cotton. 

 In the forms or squares -eggs '(one in each square) are deposited. The 

 eggs hatch in a day or two into the worms (grubs or larvae), which feed 

 upon the contents of the squares for from eight to twenty days, depend- 

 ing upon the temperature. The grubs at the end of the existence of this 



