2 MISC. PUBLICATION 3 5, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 



The fact that this weevil feeds almost entirely on cotton is very 

 important to us. When a particular kind of insect eats only one 

 kind of plant, it must have a great deal more of that plant each 

 day for its food than it would need if it could eat several different 

 kinds of plants. Then, too, insects increase very fast and eat so 

 much of their food plant that there is sometimes not enough left for 

 us to use. This is true of the cotton-boll weevil. Each year there 

 are millions of these weevils and they get hungry every clay. If 

 there is no way to destroy them in our cotton fields, they will eat 

 so much of the crop that there will not be enough left for the 

 cotton planters. 



THE COTTON-BOLL WEEVIL 



The cotton-boll weevil (fig. 1; fig. 3, C) is a small grayish or 

 brownish, hard-shelled beetle — perhaps you would call it a " bug " — 

 with six legs and a long nose or snout. You probably have seen 

 some of these weevils in your father's cotton patch and perhaps 

 you have picked them off the growing plants. If you will get one 

 and look at it closely, you will find a great many interesting things 

 about the little animal. 



In the first place, the weevil is only about one-fourth of an inch 

 long and one-twelfth of an inch broad. Keally it is a very small 

 animal to cause us so much trouble. If you look carefully through 

 a magnifying glass you will find that its mouth is at the end of its 

 snout and has a double pair of jaws for biting and chewing. This 

 little weevil can either walk or fly, just as it chooses. 



In the winter the boll weevil sleeps like a bear, but it doesn't always 

 have such a well-sheltered place as the bear's den in which to make 

 its bed. In the fall, when the weather turns chilly and the nights 

 are frosty, the weevils which are alive at that time look for shelter of 

 some kind in which to take their long winter nap. Some of them 

 will creep under dead grass or fallen leaves while others will fly to 

 the Spanish moss that hangs from the tree branches in long gray 

 streamers in some parts of the Cotton Belt. This moss (fig. 2) is a 

 favorite sleeping place, although it would not seem to offer much 

 protection in winter. 



A great many weevils never wake from their sleep but are killed 

 by the cold of winter. It has been found, by men who have kept 

 cotton-boll weevils in large outdoor wire-screen cages over winter, 

 that in ordinary years only about six or seven out of a hundred ever 

 wake up in the spring. When weevils are kept in cages like this for 

 study, they are given just the kind of sleeping quarters they would 

 themselves choose and the cages are kept in the same weather that the 

 insects would have to stand if they were in their natural homes. 

 When the winters are extremely cold, very few weevils will live, but 

 if the winter is unusually warm, then more Avill live through. 



In early spring the weevils begin to wake up, but they do not all 

 wake up at the same time. Some are early risers while others are 

 late sleepers. Some of them wake up in March while others appear 

 in April and May, and some stragglers do not come to life even 

 until June. If the newly awakened weevils find cotton growing 



