COTTON IN WEEVIL-CONTROL EXPERIMENTS - 
No squares were removed that were less than 10 days old, at which 
time the involucre of the square was about three-eighths of an inch 
in length. It was found to be impossible to remove squares smaller 
than this without breaking the tips of the fruiting branches or injuring 
the terminal buds of the plants. Records were obtained of the 
number of squares picked from four rows in the April 19 and April 28 
plantings. The number of plants to the row and the number of 
squares removed from each row are given in Table 4. 
Number of squares removed on June 12 from cotton plants of the first 
and second plantings in rows 200 feet long at San Antonio 
TABLE 4. 
r Average Average 
N uber Number | number aber Number | number 
Date planted, 1923 Pees S lof squares) of squares |; Date planted, 1923 ‘one of squares|of squares 
: © | removed to the a removed | tothe 
oy plant plant 
392 787 2.0 | 300 128 0.4 
% aye 
Fe eeeenes 1 eral ee mi) us) 
| 387 734 1.9 | 334 193 6 
| i 
An average of two squares removed from each plant corresponds 
to the amount of stripping reported in experiments with the stripping 
method in Florida.2 A difference of nine days in the planting date of 
the first and second plantings resulted in only one-fourth as many 
Squares being removed from the second planting as from the first. 
In plantings which were deferred until May 5 and May 12 there was 
no necessity of square removal to avoid infestation by overwintered 
weevils. 
The average time required for finding and removing squares was 
48 minutes per row in the April 19 planting and 22 minutes per row 
in the planting of April 28, the length of rows being 200 feet. On 
this basis the time required to strip an acre was estimated at 41 hours 
for the first planting and 19 hours for the second. At the rate of 
four days per acre, or even two days, the labor requirement for square 
stripping is considerable. 
Only 2 weevils were found in squares removed from the two blocks 
oi the second planting, while 96 weevils were caught in the three 
blocks of the first planting. The fact that so few weevils were 
caught in the second planting is probably due to the smaller number 
of large squares on the later plants. Weevils which are feeding on 
the floral bud inside the involucre of large squares are more likely to 
be caught. 
A hundred squares from each row in the April 19 and April 28 
plantings were examined, in order to determine the percentage of 
squares that had been punctured. The records of punctured squares 
in each block of the first planting gave the following average per- 
centages of infestation: Block 1, 23; block 2, 14; block 3,,12. The 
- first block of the second planting had 9.7 per cent and the second block 
had 6.5 per cent of the squares punctured. 
Calcium arsenate in dry-dust form was applied to the entire field 
immediately following the removal of squares from the first two 
3 Smith, G. D. A preliminary report upon an improved method of controlling the boll weevil. Fla. 
Agr. Exp. Sta. Bul. 165, 72 p., illus. 1922. 
