COTTON OR WEEVILS 5 
white, footless grub appears. This grub looks very much lke a 
small worm and all it can do is eat and grow. 
Owing to the care taken by the mother weevil in placing the egg 
within the bud, the little grub finds itself actually touching the very 
kind of tender, juicy food that it needs. After eating away for 
from 7 to 12 days, the grub, or larva as the scientist calls it, becomes 
full grown (fig. 3, A) and changes into another stage called the 
pupa (fig. 3, B). This time in the life of the weevil is lke the 
well-known chrysalis stage of the butterfly. 
In the meantime all the inside part of the flower bud has been 
eaten. Needless to say, it will never bloom for it is entirely dead. 
Frequently these eaten flower buds drop off the plant and fall to 
the ground. Even before the flower buds drop they look very dif- 
ferent from healthy buds. They become whitish and the three outer 
Fic. 3.—The pearly white egg which the mother weevil puts into a tiny hole in the 
flower bud hatches into a grub. This grub eats and grows for from 7 to 12 days. 
It then changes to a pupa. From three to five days later the little creature sheds 
its skin. It has now become a full-grown or “adult” weevil, like its mother. 
By using its tiny jaws it soon cuts a hole in the flower bud and crawls out. The 
weevil grub is shown at A, the pupa at B, and the adult weevil, feeding on a cotton 
boll, at C. All are natural size 
leaves or bracts open out or flare. In a healthy bud these bracts 
are pressed together. Figure 4 shows this difference between healthy 
buds and a flared bud. 
After the pupal stage of the weevil has lasted from three to five 
days another change takes place; the little creature sheds its skin 
and wriggles clear of it in the exact form of the parent weevil that 
laid the egg. The egg has now become a full-grown or adult weevil, 
and it is time to leave its childhood home. It is still inside the walls 
of the flower bud, but by using its tiny jaws it soon cuts a hole the 
size of its body and crawls through it to the outside world. 
When the little bug first comes out of the cotton square its body 
is soft and orange colored. After it has found food and lived in the 
open air for a few days the shell of its body hardens and turns a 
darker shade. In about five days from the time of leaving the 
