2 MISC. PUBLICATION 35, U. 8S. 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 day. 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. 8, 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. Really 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 te 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) 1s 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 will 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 
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