6 MISC. PUBLICATION 35, U. 8. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
flower bud the weevil, if a female, begins to lay eggs. This we call 
the beginning of another generation. It usually takes from two to 
three weeks, depending on the weather, for a generation to develop 
through the different stages of egg, larva, and pupa, to the adult 
form. There are several generations each year, made up of males 
and females in about equal numbers. 
THE DAMAGE A WEEVIL DOES 
The female weevil seems to like to lay her eggs in the flower bud 
of the cotton plant. She lkes the bud much better than she does 
any other part of the plant. Sometimes there are not enough flower 
buds for all the eggs and then the female has to hunt some other 
fig. 4.—This shows how the three outside leaves, or bracts, flare out when the inside 
of the flower bud, or square, has been eaten away by the boll-weevil grub. A and 
C are healthy flower buds. B is a flared bud which has been eaten out by a weevil 
grub. About two-thirds natural size 
place to put them. If it is late enough in the season for the plant 
to have bolls, she will lay her eggs in these. 
A boll, you understand, is the fruit of the plant and is what the 
flower bud grows into. The boll is not a fruit such as man can eat. 
This word “fruit” is hard to understand sometimes because we use 
it in two different ways. Some speak of fruit as that part of a plant 
that one can eat. A botanist—that is, a man who studies plants— 
‘alls the fruit that part of the plant that makes the seed. Many 
plants first form buds which grow into flowers and then these make 
seeds. A botanist calls this the fruit of the plant, regardless of 
whether we can eat it or not. Many plants, such as the ferns and 
mosses, do not make fruit in this way, but most of our common 
plants do. 
After the flower buds on the cotton plant open into blossoms the 
bright, showy parts soon fade and drop off. What is left after the 
