aoe 
Project. The destruction of creton plants bezan on Thursday, Decem- 
Ber /, 1933. On December 11 Mr. Ewing reported that 30 ©. W. A. men 
were working with 23 teams, mowers, or rakes, and on Decerber 15 he 
reportec 100 men with 23 teams attached to mowing machines and rakes, 
In the supervision of this project Mr. Ewing is assisted by Rex Mc- 
Garr, G. L. Smith, R. W. Moreland, and J. C. Clark. ‘There are about 
360,000 acres in Calhoun County, a survey of which, made in October 
1933; showed that 17,590 acres had croton plents on them. The present 
plan is to destroy the croton on 9,880 acres located in proximity to 
cotton fields or from which it is thought the hoppers may spread to 
cotton. 
Pink bollworm infestation in Laguna District, Mexico.--H. S. Cavitt 
returned to the Presidio, Tex., Laboratory on November 20 from the 
Tlahualilo, Dgo., Mex., sublaboratory, where he has been assisting ¢. S. 
Rude during the summer, studying the age of cotton bolls susceptibdle 
to pink bollworm attack and the extent of damage caused to bolls of 
different ages. In these studies 118,000 blooms were tageed and the 
Dolls produced from them collected for further examination. He reports 
that although the early and midseason pink bollvorn infestation in the 
Laguna was very light, it became very heavy late in the season. Exan. 
inations of cotton bolls from the heavily infested Laguna section of 
Mexice by C. S. Rude showed an average of 4.7 pink bollworm larvae per 
boll in the material used-for hibernation studies. Another examination 
of a 30-pound sample of seed cotton showed an estimated population of 
over 10,000 larvae, or at the rate of 500,000 pink bollworns per bale. 
. 
Large numbers of pink bollworms hibernating in soil this year.—- 
mee, Fenton and W. L. Owen, Jr., Presidio, Tex., report that soil 
examinations from heavily infested fields in the Big Bend show more 
pink bollworms nNibernating in the soil this year than usual. The pink 
DOollworms hibernate as larvae, and in the field over 90 percent are 
normally found in the squares, lint, and seed attached to the stalks 
or on the soil surface, whereas the others leave the squares and bolls 
and spin silken cocoons (webs) in the soil or on the roots of the 
Plants. By thoroughly cleaning the fields of all crop debris, es i 
being done this year by the Bureau of Plant Quarantine as a repressive 
measure, most of the larvae above ground are destroyed. Complete re- 
ports are not yet available of tie number or percentage of the worm 
population hibernating in the soil this year, but the exanination of 
5 to 10 square yards of soil from -each of seven fields to a depth of 
@ inches shows that in the various fields the number of larvae ranged 
from 0.7 to 4.5 per square yard, showing that an average of 3.20 larvae 
per square yard have "spun up" in the soil. In the fields examined 
over 15,000 larvae per acre will therefore remain in the soil, where 
they cannot be reached by the clean-up. The worm population is less 
than last year, and it is not known why more worms have hibernated in 
the soil then was the case last year. 
6p) 
