Recourse was had to the Department of Agriculture in 1901, and a large sum was appropriated for experi mental work leading to control. Dr. Howard, testifying before the House Agricultural Committee admitted: "This is absolutely the most difficult problem in economic en tomology that the whole world has ever had to handle." He went on to say that the weevil had no natural enemy, and no insecticide yet discovered was of avail. "The wee vil will starve before it will eat anything but cotton." There was not a possibility of stopping its spread for its generations are capable of combined flights amounting to fifty to seventy-five miles a Hon. George F. Bur gess testified that the cold did not affect the weevil. "We have frozen some of the scoundrels in a bar of ice and kept them two days and then broken the bar of ice and put them in the sun and they thawed out and flew off." 27 Research by government specialists and journalism had spread pictures and descriptions of the insect until it was known to farmers far and wide. Hundreds of species of weevils resemble the Mexican boll weevil. The weevil was on the public mind, and many people reported finding specimens far outside the infected area. The Department stated that the only sure way to determine that a suspected insect was a weevil was to send it to an entomologist for Before long, however, this grayish, or brownish bug, one-fourth of an inch long with a snout half the length of its body, was to become too well known to require expert identification. A puz zling habit of the boll weevil to play dead helped to identify it in the early days. When touched, the bug usually draws up its limbs and falls to the ground. A strange superstition arose that the weevil's long snout could be heated red-hot as though made of metal. The test of the truth of this must have afforded sport to many a small farmer boy.
The plant entomologists had already worked out the life history of the weevil but had gained little consola tion therefrom. It was found to spend the winter in the weevil state, hibernating in stalks, weeds, underbrush, and trees at the edge of cotton fields. At the touch of warm spring days the weevils emerge to feed upon the first bolls of volunteer cotton plants. However, they can do without food from forty to ninety days after hiberna tion. They puncture the young squares both for feeding and for planting their eggs within. The square usually drops to the ground, and within four weeks the egg has passed from larva through pupa to weevil stage. When the bolls develop, the weevils lay their eggs in the in terior just as in the squares?' The difficulty in poisoning the insects arises just here. They feed and lay their eggs in the inside of the boll where no insecticide, it was thought, could avail.
The factors found to limit the damage were severe winters, hot summers, and early maturing crops. Cold does kill those weevils least sheltered, as experiments showed. Eleven per cent survived in mild winters to only 2.82 per cent in severe Direct, unobstructed rays of a tropic sun falling on the infected square cause death to immature weevils. In some experiments as high as 90 per cent of the weevils in larva and pupa stages have been killed.' Early maturing cotton simply beats the insects to it before they have had time to reproduce in sufficient numbers to ruin the crop.
The Department experts were unconvinced that the Mexican weevil did not have some native parasite, and in 1902-3 occurred a rather romantic adventure with the "Guatemala ant." 0. F. Cook, sent to study the cotton culture of the Guatemala Indians, reported Kekchi cotton to have special characteristics that made it im mune to attack by weevil. Even more interesting was his find of the kelep, a large, reddish brown, ant-like insect that ate weevils. Its way of dining was in this manner : With its mandibles held firmly around the belt of the weevil, the kelep bent its flexible body around to insert neatly a sting on the vulnerable line between head and thorax. When the poison took effect the somnolent wee vil was carried to the underground nest and fed to the larva. After extracting the meats, the ant scrupulously and carefully packed the empty hulls away in a special underground storeroom. This ant did not eat cotton but was attracted to it by the nectar. It was in his con
sequent strolls over the plant that he met and took pos session of the weevil.' The entomologist reported that he had been found adapted for domestication and developed no bad habits in captivity. A number were captured and colonized in Texas where it was reported they bred freely. Newspaper headlines announced: "Experts Introduce Guatemala Ant to Exterminate Boll Weevil." 33 The news story was too good to be true. In its 1906 yearbook a Department specialist wrote: "The attempt to introduce the so-called Guatemala ant to prey upon the boll weevil proved a failure." In spite of the experimental work of the Department of Agriculture and the $50,000 prize offered by the Texas legislature, the weevil spread rapidly. Within the period from 1892 to 1922 the spread of the insect had covered the whole of the Cotton Belt with the exception of western Texas and northern North Carolina. By the end of that year 614,213 square miles of cotton-pro ducing territory had fallen before the advancing plague of insects. Practically 87 per cent of the Cotton Belt and 96 per cent of the crop were under At first the spread had been slow, but by 1900 half of Texas was infested. For the first ten years after crossing the Rio Grande the weevil's annual rate of spread was 5,640 square miles. In 1903 the weevil had reached the western tip of Louisiana, by 1906 Arkansas. The Mis sissippi River was crossed in 1907, and by 1910 the wee vil had covered southern Mississippi and penetrated into Alabama. For the ten years from 1901 to 1911 the insect increased his annual spread to 26,880 square miles. After reaching Georgia in 1914 it spread rapidly, and in 1916 the weevil increased its flights to add 71,800 square miles of new territory. It touched South Carolina in 1917, swept across the state in two years and virtually cov ered North Carolina by 1923. The maps prepared by the Department of Agriculture show that the rate of spread of cotton boll weevil was much more rapid to the east than to the north or west. The droughts, as mentioned, have so far preserved the Great Plains as a weevil-free cotton area. The weevil has invaded this territory but has been driven back by climatic conditions. He has shown himself wonderfully adaptable, however, and may in time adjust to the region." The limiting factors in the northern advance are also climatic. The longer winters retard the ravages of the pest by causing its later emergence from hibernating quarters and by requiring a great length of time for development through all its stages. The insect thus gets a late start, and the earlier date of the first killing frost is likely to reduce its numbers." The Alluvial Belt and the Alabama Black Belt in turn fell under the onslaughts of the enemy. Insect dam age ran to 9.93 per cent in 1915, 13.36 in 1916, dropped to 5.83 in 1918, and then rose to 13.20 in 1919, 19.95 in 1920, and in 1921 was over one-third of the crop, 31 per cent. It was freely predicted by British experts and secretly feared by Americans that the United States had lost her cotton monopoly and could never produce an other great crop. The long staple crop in the Central Valley was practically wiped out, the Gulf Coast line was denuded of cotton, and the Sea Island crop be came a thing of the past. Writing in 1923, John A. Todd, the English expert, pointed out that there was no immediate prospect of the discovery of any real cure for the weevil, suggested that it had not yet done its worst, and concluded, "The whole state of affairs . . . raises a very serious question as to the future of the American Upland crop." 37 The seriousness with which the country as a whole regarded the menacing invasion is reflected in the heroic measures taken by Dr. Stubb, director of the Louisiana Experiment Station, upon finding a few weevils on the farm, at a time when the pests were not known outside Texas. The roots of the cotton plants were dug up and burned in oil with the stalks ; the ground was treated with oil; and finally the Mississippi River was turned in on the farm. The fields were kept covered to a depth of two feet for ten days. Needless to say, such decisive action was rewarded by annihilation of the bugs.