81 



As a rule cotton crops have not received the attention necessary for 

 their best growth and fruitfulness. This lack of necessar}^ cultivation 

 is more particularly noticeable with tenant farmers. The plant is thus 

 least able to overcome insect ravages and put on additional fruit in 

 place of that destroyed. The natural perennial habit of the cotton 

 plant tends to make its growing season later and later for a given 

 locality. The continued use of seed of local and often unknown origin, 

 frequently secured from public gins, has been instrumental in produc- 

 ing a rank, late fruiting and maturing strain of cotton on which boll- 

 worm ravages are generally admitted to be much more severe than on 

 earlier maturing varieties. 



The principal crops grown, namely, cotton and corn, are the two 

 preferred food plants of the bollworm, and in the absence of fall and 

 winter plowing the insect finds conditions most favorable for its 

 development. 



. In the more eastern cotton belt States conditions affecting the status 

 of the bollworm present important differences and readily account for 

 the unimportant character of the insect as a cotton pest in these States. 

 The smaller size of farms does not permit of the cultivation of cotton 

 in such large and unbroken areas; while the "weed" is smaller and 

 less succulent by reason of a lesser fertility of the soil. The general 

 use of fertilizers hastens the formation of fruit, so that it is more 

 quickly out of danger of insect attack. The rotation of crops also is 

 much more generalh^ practiced. The three-3^ear rotation of corn, cot- 

 ton, and oats, or other crops, insures thorough plowing of the lands. 

 Cowpeas are very generally planted in corn as it is being laid by, and 

 often after oats, thus furnishing the bollworm moth with an abun- 

 dance of food from the nectaries of the flower stalk, and they are thus 

 not forced to the cotton fields for food. In Georgia the senior author 

 has seen bollworm moths literally in swarms feeding in cowpeas, to the 

 complete neglect of adjacent fields of cotton. 



It would appear that there is some relation between the relative 

 acreage in cotton and peas in the different States and the injury 

 suffered by these States from bollworms. The following table, com- 

 piled from the Twelfth Census, of the plantings of cotton and peas for 

 the year 1899, is of interest in this connection: 



Table III. 



— Comparative acreage in cotton and cowpeas, 1899. 



' 





State. . 





Acreage in 

 cotton. 



Acreage in 

 peas. 



Ratio of 



acreage in 



cotton and 



peas. 



North Carolina . 



1,007,020 

 221,825 

 2, 074, 081 

 3,513,839 

 3, 202. 135 - 

 2, 897, 920 

 1,641,855 

 1,376,254 

 6, 960, 367 



88, 407 

 17, 875 

 143,070 

 167, 032 

 91, 126 

 64, 490 

 31,414 

 15, 190 

 33,947 



11 tol 



Florida .. 



12 tol 



South Carolina 



13 tol 



Georgia 



21 tol 



Alabama 



35 tol 



Mississippi 



41 to 1 



Arkansas 



52 to 1 



Louisiana 



91 tol 



Texas 



205 to 1 







