52 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOLL WEEVIL CONVENTION. 



cotton crop could be imported in cotton seed, seed cotton, cotton ana hay. 

 It was then suggested that these commodities should be quarantined as 

 coming from Texas. To this demand for quarantine the oil mills all 

 responded without a murmur that they would sacrifice that part of their 

 inheritance, and would not bring any cotton seed from Texas into Louisi- 

 ana. I am sorry to say that the interests importing the other commodi- 

 ties did not respond with the same alacrity but took it under considera- 

 tion. 



At the meetings mentioned at Shreveport and Dallas I listened with 

 attention to "the great number of scientific researches, experiments and 

 advancd ideas for the destruction of the boll weevil, but all resulted 

 without giving any positive cure. Nothing but recommendations with the 

 hope that a parasite would in the order of Providence develop itself that 

 would exterminate the pest. I shudder at the job that confronts this 

 parasite, after reading that, a male and female weevil .in the fullness of 

 their domestic felicity can develop an offspring of 314,000,000 in one 

 season. This I learned from an article in one of your daily papers. In 

 the furtherance of my interest for repelling and combatting this pes- 

 tilential immigrant, it occurred to me that his native country, Mexico, 

 must have some practical way of handling him, as we never heard of his 

 destructiveness in that country to any malignant extent. To satisfy 

 myself I dictated a letter to a friend of mine, the largest manufacturer 

 of soap, candles and cotton seed oil in the Republic of Mexico, and who 

 controls about all the cotton seed raised from cotton in the State of 

 Durango, the only State in Mexico in which cotton is raised to any extent. 

 Here is his reply to my queries : 



"GOMEZ PALACCIO, September 30th, 1903. 



"Mv DEAR FRIEND Replying to your favor of the 25th inst, I beg to 

 say that I will do my best to answer your questions in regard to the boll 

 weevil in Mexico: 



"It has been demonstrated in this country, year after year, that the boll 

 weevil is always with us, but that he cannot multiply nor ravage the 

 cotton crops. The planters claim that the only means known to destroy 

 the boll weevil, or at least to limit his ability to destroying little or no- 

 thing, is by_^drojauiing ; or in fact the same method as was used by the 

 vineyard owners in Southern France when their vines were being de- 

 stroyed by the Philoxera. The planters here kill two birds with the 

 same stone. They kill all kinds of vermin and especially the boll weevil 

 and at the same time wet the ground ready for ploughing, by inundating 

 the plantations. They pursue the method of erecting around each plan- 

 tation, or parts of each plantation, a small dyke about one meter high, 

 and fill this enclosure up with a three-fourths meter depth of water. 

 They claim that this drowns out all the vermin, and at the same time 



