COTTON" BOLL- WEEVIL CONTEOL IN THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA. 7 



the simple form just described and that all possessed the additional 

 disadvantage of being more expensive to make. 



Observations were made to determine the time required per acre 

 for the operation of the bag-and-hoop, and it was found to vary 

 widely with the individual laborer, but the general range was found 

 to be from 1 to 2 acres per hand per day. Of course the operation 

 would be more rapid during the early pickings when the plants are 

 small and weevils are rather scarce. The figures secured, however, 

 seem to indicate that from 1 to 1^ acres per laborer per day is the 

 best average that can be expected throughout the picking season. 

 On a day-wage basis this would mean an average expenditure of some 

 40 to 60 cents per acre for each picking, and if the pickings were 

 continued very late into the season this expense would be considerably 

 increased. 



The time interval between pickings which will yield the best results 

 is still open to question, but it seems advisable to make it shorter than 

 that between square pickings in order to reduce the time for square 

 puncturing allowed the weevils, and also to reduce the number of 

 infested forms falling to the ground between pickings, thus secur- 

 ing the benefit of both square picking and weevil picking. The 

 studies to date seem to indicate that better results will be secured 

 from several pickings given early in the season with a short time 

 interval than where the same number of pickings are extended over 

 a longer period by making the time interval a week or more. In 

 fact, when the labor supply is not sufficient to allow this intensive 

 treatment of all of the cotton it seems probable that better net 

 results would be secured by concentrating the labor on only a por- 

 tion of the crop and allowing the remainder to go untreated. In 

 the case of cotton worked by wage labor the control measures could 

 be concentrated on certain cuts, while in a case of tenant cotton the 

 thorough and consistent picking of a portion of a cut would probably 

 be more profitable than scattering the same amount of labor over the 

 entire cut, in a series of more or less irregular and haphazard 

 pickings. This concentration of effort, however, would not apply 

 in a season of exceedingly heavy weevil infestation when the avail- 

 able food supply on the near-by untreated cotton would soon be 

 exhausted and the weevils would migrate into the picked cotton in 

 search of food. Except under these conditions, however, the early 

 season interfield movement of weevils is apparently sufficiently slight 

 to allow their control within a comparatively small area. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



The foregoing discussion has been devoted to the consideration of 

 the best methods of picking weevils and squares, and the figures have 

 been based on a day wage scale. There now remains to be considered 



