95 



of prevailing winds and an average gain of 50 miles annually was the rule 

 during the boll weevil's 30-year march across the U.S. Cotton Belt. 

 Mechanical dispersal by man was probably minimal compared to this natural 

 dissemination. The flight ability of the boll weevil has been substantiated 

 by sustained flying to 11 miles on a flight mill and by the capture of adults 

 to 2000 feet altitude. In the last 10 years boll weevils have been fou.id in 

 previously uninfested cotton presumably due to natural flights of at least 50 

 miles in West Texas and of 35 miles in Louisiana. A boll weevil was trapped 

 in Chihuahua, Mexico 45 miles from cultivated cotton. Marked native weevils 

 have been recaptured on several occasions at distances of 20 and 25 miles from 

 the point of release and one female was retrapped 33 miles away 27 to 33 days 

 after release. Dispersal by emerging overwintered boll weevils is considerable, 

 especially when cotton is not replanted near the hibernation jite. The most 

 distant migration occurs in the last reproducing generptic^n, most notably by 

 the females. An influx beginning this year on August 15 into the core of the 

 Pilot Boll Weevil Eradication Experiment area was the result of migration by 

 this generation. 



177. . 1976. History of tne boll weevil problem. In^ Boll Weevil Suppression, 



Management, and Elimination Technoltygy. Proc . of a Conference, February 

 '——13-15, 1S7A, Memphis, Tenn. U.S. Agric. Res. Serv. [RepJ ARS-S-71, 



pp. 1-2. 

 Before the 1890' s we did not know there was a boll weevil. Pre-Columbian 

 Indians in Central America and Mexico may have known of its damaging cotton, 

 but we can find little evidence of it except for an aduit specimen found m 

 a Gossypium hirsutum L. boll fragment from Oaxaca, Mexico, in diggings 

 dated 900 A.D. If Spanish Ainericans had boll weevil problems before the 

 middle 1800' s no record has been seen. The earliest known record of the 

 boll weevil did not even connect it with cotton. It was describeJ by 





