12 WEEVIL-RESISTING ADAPTATIONS OF COTTON. 



as soon as the Kekchi, but they show far less tendency to determinate 

 growth. 



The development of earliness has been assisted, no doubt, by the 

 climatic conditions which prevail in eastern Guatemala. The rainy 

 season oftens begins before the cotton harvest is completed, so that 

 the later bolls are very likely to become diseased, or, if they reach 

 maturity and open, the lint is often beaten to the ground and made too 

 dirty for use in spinning and weaving. In either case the seed is not 

 harvested. 



The Indians believe that even if they did not pull the cotton up it 

 would not become a perennial, but would die out completely, even to 

 the roots, during the rainy season. Seeds scattered accidentally in 

 the plantation at harvest time are rotted by the rain and do not germi- 

 nate, so that little or no volunteer cotton is carried over from one 

 season to another. 



If the Kekchi cotton were the only variety planted in Guatemala 

 and the weevil had there, as in the United States, no other food plant 

 than the cotton, the insects might all die off between April or May, 

 when the cotton is pulled up, and October, when the next crop is 

 planted. There is, however, enough perennial " tree " cotton in the 

 country to keep the pest from becoming exterminated. Moreover, 

 the question of additional food plants in Guatemala is still open. 



The importance of securing short-season varieties of cotton for the 

 United States can hardly be overestimated, since, as already intimated 

 elsewhere, there is no longer any reason to hope that the more severe 

 winters of the northern districts of the cotton belt will give any pro- 

 tection against the Aveevils. 



As long as the weevil was confined to the southern part of Texas, 

 where the cotton could survive the winter, the destruction of the 

 plants as soon as possible after the maturing of the crop was the only 

 measure calculated to seriously reduce the number of weevils. It 

 was also essential to plant cotton as early as possible in the spring to 

 avoid the weevils bred on the volunteer, or hold-over, cotton which 

 negligent planters had left in the ground. The extension of the pest 

 farther north and the possibility of securing cotton varieties with 

 determinate habits of growth introduce several new considerations. 

 The hold-over cotton is eliminated from the problem, but in the more 

 northern latitudes, where the cold comes earlier and the temperature 

 remains lower throughout the winter, it may often happen that there 

 will be no period in which the weevils can be reduced by starvation, 

 unless time can be secured for this purpose in the spring by the plant- 

 ing of short-season varieties of cotton. 



a Cook, O. F., 1905. Progress in the Stuuy of the Kelep, Science, N. S., 21 : 

 552. 



