PROTECTIVE CHARACTERS OF KEKCHI COTTOX. 13 



Instead of colder winters being unfavorable to the weevils, there is 

 every probability that cold sufficient to keep them in a torpid, inactive 

 condition will preserve their noxious lives much better than warm and 

 pleasant weather, which enables them to continue active and thus 

 deplete their vital energies. The winter of 190-1-5 was one of un- 

 precedented severity in Texas, both in absolute temperature and in 

 continued cold and wet, and yet the weevils were able, in many locali- 

 ties, to infest heavily the early plantings of cotton to a far greater 

 extent than in previous years. 



The farther north the locality the more will the efficiency of cul- 

 tural methods of avoiding the boll weevil depend upon the plant- 

 ing of quick-maturing varieties of cotton. It is true that in a 

 favorable season the cotton planted first would set its crop soonest, 

 and thus escape a part of the damage suffered by adjoining fields 

 of later growth, the earlier fields breeding weevils to attack in 

 larger force the later plantings. But instead of insuring a decrease 

 of the number of weevils in a given locality and checking the 

 propagation of the pest, very early planting by a part of the farmers 

 of a community might tend, after an early fall and a cold winter, 

 to the opposite result, since it would save the lives of large numbers 

 of weevils which would otherwise perish before the cotton, if sown 

 a few weeks later, would be large enough to furnish the weevils 

 with food. Dr. Herbert J. Webber states that planting could 

 probably be deferred even to the middle of June without impair- 

 ing the chances of a crop as large as that which can be obtained 

 in the presence of the weevil. 



There would seem to be little object in planting cotton where 

 the weevils are as abundant as in some places in southern Texas in 

 the spring of the present year. 1905. Xevertheless, the opportune 

 occurrence of a few weeks of dry weather was able, even then, to 

 greatly improve the prospects of a crop. Xo matter how bad the 

 weevils, the planter still has hope that dry weather may come and save 

 his crop from being a total loss. As long as indeterminate varie- 

 ties are planted this possibility will always make it difficult to carry 

 out a general policy of early destruction of the plants. 



Some of our Upland varieties of cotton are early enough in the 

 sense that they begin flowering and fruiting very promptly, but 

 unless the season is very dry they will produce a continuous succession 

 of buds until they are pulled up or frost cuts them off. The earli- 

 ness of practical value is not to be shown merely by the date of 

 flowering, but by the date of ripening the crop of bolls and of 

 ceasing to form new buds in which weevils can breed. If the im- 

 provements noted in other parts of this report can be realized in 

 practice, it would no longer be necessary to destroy the cotton plants 



