544 
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 17 
the plumule before the plant was up, and also the greater was the chance 
that the cotyledons would not be capable of separating properly after 
the plants were up. It was evident that decay was directly proportion¬ 
al to the number of emergence holes in the seed beans. Likewise, it 
was evident that decomposition was more rapid in beans containing 
dead weevils than in those containing living weevils. This may be due to 
the fact that the dead weevils, in all but the adult stage, decompose quite 
rapidly when moistened as they would be inside of a bean in damp soil. 
While the seed coat retarded decay the dead bodies within the bean 
hastened putrifaction. 
Young Plants Starved 
As a result of carefully weighing hundreds of Red Ripper cowpeas, the 
writer finds the loss in weight of the dried cowpeas is 18 to 22 per cent 
for 1 hole; 28 to 33 per cent for 2 holes; 33 to 38 percent for 3 holes; 
and 38 to 45 per cent for 4 holes, depending upon the size of the cow¬ 
peas infested and the weevils emerging. With larger cowpeas and 
beans the loss in weight caused by each weevil would not be so great. 
The greater the number of weevils there are in a bean of a given size, 
the smaller will be the emerging weevils, and consequently the smaller 
will be the percentage of weight loss per weevil. 
On a normal young bean plant the cotyledons shrink in size and 
wrinkle up, become leathery in texture and are practically all absorbed 
by the growing plant. The cotyledons of a weevily bean do not shrivel 
and wrinkle as rapidly and the texture does not become so leathery. 
The transformation of the plant food is slower and the growth of the 
plant is correspondingly slower. The supply of stored plant food is 
smaller, not only by the amount actually eaten by the weevils, but also 
by the amount that is made unavailable around each cavity made by 
the weevil. 
After years of experimenting with large and small beans of the same 
variety, Mr. A. W. LaForge of the California Bean Growers’ Association 
makes the statement that the small beans of a given variety have a 
tendency to produce smaller vines and fewer pods than are produced by 
the larger beans. He says they also produced a greater percentage of 
“buckskins,” or pods in which no beans mature and have a tendency to 
produce inferior beans. He attributes this to a more limited food supply 
while the plant is becoming established. The writer’s observations on 
plants coming from weevily seed beans as compared with vines from 
clean beans of equal size seems to point to a similar conclusion that the 
