16 



TERRITORY AFFECTED. 



At the present time the boll weevil has not been found in the 

 United States outside of Texas (see fig. 1) except in three instances 

 in Louisiana. In one of these cases, at the sugar experiment station 

 at Audubon Park, in the vicinity of New Orleans, the circumstances 

 have led the State authorities to the conclusion that the pests were 

 purposely placed in the fields. The other two cases are isolated oc- 

 currences in Sabine Parish, in the extreme western part of the State. 

 Both of these are apparently traceable to importation from the oppo- 

 site county in Texas, in cotton seed used for planting purposes or 

 possibly in hay. The authorities totally destroyed the cotton grow- 

 ing at the experiment station at Audubon Park, La. , as soon as the 

 presence of the weevils was discovered. As no cotton is grown 

 within 9 miles of that point, it seems altogether likely that the colony 

 may have been completely exterminated. Similar action is being 

 taken regarding the two colonies found in Sabine Parish. 



In Texas the infested area extends from Brownsville, where the 

 weevil originally entered the State, to Sherman. Shelby and Morris 

 counties represent the extreme eastern range. The cotton acreage 

 involved in this territory includes about 30 per cent of the cotton 

 acreage of the United States, which produced in 1900 about 35 per 

 cent of the total crop of this country, or about one-fourth of the crop 

 of the world for that } T ear. There is, however, a considerable belt 

 between about the latitude of Dallas and the Red River where the 

 pest does not occur in uniform numbers in all cotton fields, and con- 

 sequently the general damage has not been great. It ma} 7 be a matter 

 of only two or three years before it will become sufficiently numerous 

 to cut down the total production. 



There are some features of special interest in the situation in Cuba. 

 Although the weevil has long been known to occur in the island, it 

 has attracted very little attention on account of the fact that the cul- 

 tivation of cotton was abandoned for a long time in favor of crops that 

 have been more profitable. Now, however, with the better price of the 

 staple and rather unsatisfactory returns from some other crops, cot- 

 ton is being planted upon a considerable scale. Mr. E. A. Schwarz 

 was sent to the island on two occasions to study the conditions there. 

 Although his report refers especially to the Province of Santa Clara, 

 it is probably true that conditions similar to those he describes obtain 

 everywhere. He found that the entire province is naturally more or 

 less infested by the boll weevil, and that weevils did not spread from 

 cultivated cotton planted with seed obtained in the United States to 

 the wild plants, as at first supposed, but from the latter to the former. 

 The weevils were found to be more numerous on the kidnej 7 cotton 

 growing wild than on the loose cotton (seminiella). The latter, when 

 growing alone, was usually found to be free from weevils, but liable 

 to be infested when growing in the vicinity of kidne} r cotton. A large 



