LETTERS 



Weevil Evil 



Robert W. Jones's fascinat- 

 ing article on the boll wee- 

 vil, "March of the Weevils" 

 [2/06], recalls the lines 

 from an old blues song de- 

 scribing with chilling effect 

 what the weevil did to 

 African-American farmers 

 in the South: 



Boll weevil told the fanner, 

 "You'll need no Ford machine, 

 I'll eiit up all your cotton, 

 Can't buy no gasoline. " 



/ don V see no water, 

 But I'm about to drown, 

 I don V see no fire, 

 But I'm a-burnin ' down. 



In my work on Maya 

 plant use and agriculture in 

 the Mexican state of 

 Quintana Roo, I found 

 that Maya in isolated vil- 



12 NATURAL HISTORY April 2006 



lages were growing strange 

 (often very large) and an- 

 cient varieties of cotton, 

 usually under the name 

 "snake cotton" (tamankaan 

 in Maya). Those local vari- 

 eties of cotton never had a 

 bit of weevil damage. They 

 should be sought out. 

 Eugene N. Anderson 

 University of California 

 Riverside, California 



Robert Jones's article pre- 

 sents the history of the boll 

 weevil invasion of the U.S. 

 Cotton Belt with great 

 clarity. His presentation of 

 one of the sidelights to the 

 story was particularly 

 lucid — the seemingly eso- 

 teric questions concerning 

 the taxonomy and classifi- 

 cation of boll weevils and 



their host plants. The an- 

 swers to those questions, 

 which have added to biol- 

 ogists' knowledge about 

 the life history and evolu- 

 tionary history of the wee- 

 vil, have also led to new 

 avenues of research in the 

 development of possible 

 control measures. For ex- 

 ample, investigators have 

 discovered that parasites 

 might be able to replace 

 pesticide sprays in extermi- 

 nating the weevil. 

 Paul A. Fryxell 

 Rancho Santa Ana Botanic 



Garden 

 Clarcnumt, California 



Robert W.Jones replies: 

 Eugene N. Anderson's in- 

 triguing comment pertains 

 to the larger question of 



whether the pre-Colum- 

 bian cultures of Meso- 

 america had to deal with 

 the boll weevil. Some in- 

 vestigators maintain that 

 the weevil is a recent pest, 

 having switched from its 

 wild host, Hampea, only 

 shortly before invading the 

 United States. But the dis- 

 covery of a weevil in a 

 cotton boll from Central 

 Mexico dating from A.l>. 

 900 indicates that the wee- 

 vil was a pest of cultivated 

 cotton long before it ap- 

 peared in the U.S. Yet in- 

 digenous cultures were 

 clearly able to grow sizable 

 quantities of cotton, which 

 suggests they had a variety 

 of tactics and, as Mr. 

 Anderson proposes, resis- 

 (Continued on page 75) 



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