30 HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
the course of its life. We know exactly how it lives all the year round 
and under exactly what conditions. We have experimented with 
every suggested remedy and everything that our own experience In 
fighting other insects has suggested. . 
The Cuarrman. What does it live on in the winter? 
Mr. Howarp. It does not feed inthe winter. It hibernates, stowed 
away in old corn stalks left standing on the field and in the old cotton 
stalks which are also left in the field, under the bark of trees, under 
logs, at the roots of tufts of grasses, and particularly along the edges 
of woods where cotton fields approach them, as they do in a great 
many places throughout Texas and other Southern States. 
The Cuarrman. Can they be carried in bales? : 
Mr Howarp. They are carried in bales of cotton to the gins. They 
are carried from the country gins in the bales which go to the com- 
press. After the cotton has gone through the compress the weevils 
are utterly destroyed, but the carriage of bales which have not been 
compressed is a source of danger and infestation of the crop. 
On account of this great diversity of places of hibernation there 
seenis to be nothing very practical which can be done toward destroy- 
ing the insect during the winter. It is possible, of course, to cut 
down and burn the cotton and corn stalks. In that way a great many 
of them would be killed, but there would be stil enough surviving 
along the edges of woods and along the roots of old grasses to infest 
the cotton crop the following spring. 
We have tried the application of insecticides. We have tried sprays 
of all possible kinds. We have tried poisonous sprays. Of course 
those are expensive, to begin with, and they are not efficacious. The 
weevil itself feeds very little. It lays its egg in the boll, penetrating 
it with that beak you see in front of its Mead, and the grub works 
inward and not outward, so that no poison can reach the grub. It was 
supposed that at one time in the early spring, before the cotton bloomed, 
it would gnaw holes in the leaves and stems and in that way would dig 
up some of the poison, but in our experiments, extending over two 
years, we have shown that it is peculiarly resistant to all poison. It 
can eat a leaf which is immersed in paris green solution, and it will 
not be killed by that dose. It is as bad as the gypsy moth in Massa- 
chusetts. 
Then we have tested all sorts of machinery, not only for the appli- 
cation of dry poison, but for the collection of the cotton squares as 
they fall to the ground, collecting them by suction. Several machines 
have been invented and tried, but it seems to be an impracticable 
remedy. As I say, everything that could possibly be conceived of has 
been tested. 
We have made a thorough study in the way of search for natural 
enemies. We have gone to the original home of the insect in Mexico 
and studied it carefully there. We have gone as far down as Yucatan 
and have searched also in Cuba, where the insect also lives. and we 
have as yet found no natuaal enemy which could be qnteoduced to 
advantage. 
The Cuarrman. The insect is in Cuba, is it? 
Mr. Howarp. It is in Cuba. 
a elise pes : ane anything but cotton. 
r. Howarp. Nothing but cotton. We have foun i i 
feeds upon but cotton. montane tat 
