CHAPTER XXII. 
INSECT ENEMIES OF THE COTTON PLANT 
You have heard about some of the troubles that 
come to the cotton farmer through the depreda- 
tions of insects; maybe you have been troubled 
yourself; if so, you are altogether familiar with 
trouble of the real and true sort. But you, in those 
regions where the plague has not yet come, you had 
better go out to meet the foe, ere he come, rather 
than delay the battle until the enemy is upon you. 
For in either case you face a foe of no uncommon 
kind, determined, aggressive, often defeated, but 
so undaunted by defeat that it keeps on, usually 
winning in the end. Such, at least, has been our 
experience with the Mexican Boll Weevil. Slowly 
at first it approached, merely selecting a place for 
camp; but that first camp became really a fort, 
and in all directions its outrunners have gone, gain- 
ing in numbers, until to-day their aggressiveness 
and power threaten the whole Cotton Belt. 
I. THE MEXICAN COTTON BOLL WEEVIL 
Monclova, Mexico, produced considerable cot- 
ton in the early half of the last century; from some- 
where, in some direction, came the insect of this 
story. How long it encamped around this little 
town we do not know, but sometime between 1860 
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