CROP PEST COMMISSION OF 



No diminution of the infested area was noticeable as a result 

 of the climatic conditions prevailing: during the winter of 1903-04. 



Acting upon the knowledge of the weevil's habits available 

 at that time, the Commission undertook the complete extermina- 

 tion of the weevil in this limited area and undertook to prevent 

 the spread of the insect by a rigid quarantine upon cotton seed, 

 hulls and seed cotton, as well as upon household goods, hay, grain, 

 sacks, baled cotton, etc., from the weevil-infested sections. 



The extermination of the Sabine Parish colony was under- 

 taken in the spring of 1904, by prohibiting the farmers in the 

 affected territory from planting cotton, the land owners and 

 tenants being paid a cash rental by the Commission and in ad- 

 dition being permitted to grow any crop other than cotton, that 

 they desired. 



Near Logansport an infestation covering a few acres, was 

 found in the early summer of 1904, having evidently been there 

 the autumn previous, but undetected. Extermination of this 

 colony was accomplished by destruction of the cotton plants in 

 the area involved and by systematic hand-picking of adult wee- 

 vils and squares from trap-plants. 



Early in August of 1904, the Special Field Agents of the 

 Bureau of Entomology who were employed in Louisiana under 

 the immediate personal supervision of Prof. IT. A. Morgan, then 

 Entomologist of the Crop Pest Commission, discovered boll wee- 

 vils generally distributed in cotton fields where a few days before 

 careful inspections had revealed none at all. Their numbers, as 

 well as their occurrence in cotton fields several miles distant 

 from the two original colonies, precluded all possibility of their 

 T)eing individuals which had escaped destruction at the time of 

 extermination of these colonies. In all of the infested fields, 

 Prof. Morgan and his assistants found only adult weevils, eggs 

 and very young larvae, showing that the arrival of the adult 

 weevils in fields many miles apart had been practically simul- 

 taneous. 



Only one explanation of this phenomenon presented itself, 

 and that was that these weevils had migrated from the infested 

 cotton fields of Texas. Further examinations of cotton fields 

 during the summer and autumn months of 1904, by Prof. Morgan 

 and the Special Field Agents of the Bureau of Entomology, <vs- 



