The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-09
TEN COMMANDMENTS | 0N BOIL WEEv|L FIGHT Experiment Station Issues Im-
 portant Bulletin SENT FREE TO FARMERS Tell How Boil WeeviI Spreads, Breeds and Migrates and What to Do to
 Figkt the Little Pest at
 Every Turn
SENT FREE TO FARMERS

| Auburn, January S.-(Specia1. )-Researcll of scientists and bitter experience of far mers are two factors in the evolution of rules and recommendations which can be used to overcome the boil weevil. Be tween the two, the boil weevil code has been formulated, In ten commandments of vital importance. The code, as re- vealed in a series of circulars issued by the Alabama experiment station at Au- | burn, is:
 Make the crop of cotton early. l Select the cotton seed carefully. | Pick the cotton promptly. | Destroy all green cotton as early as | possible, to save next years crop
 Raise variety of crops. Diversity farming.
 Rotate crops.
 Prepare soil more deeply and thorough | y before planting.
 Cultivate only about one and one-half inches deep.
 Farm clean. Destroy stalks in the fall. | Burn the stalks, the most effective method.
 | There are other commandments, but the others are subdivisions of the basic ten. | Follow the ten, declares the Auburn cir culars, and the weevil will be successfully combated.
 The circulars are optimistic in tone, and yet they are rigid in their demands. The fight is not hopeless. they say, but to win the fight start must be made immedi- ately along the lines of the campaign as mapped out. | The circulars are three in number. The first, entitled "The Boil Weevil Advance | in Ala abama," tells of the various stages and work and habits of the weevil; then the manner in which the weevil passes the winter, the breeding of the weevil, | its migration. The second circular out | lines many rules which must be followed in the general warfare against the wee vii. The third circular, Destroying Boil | Weevils by Clean Farming" deals with | the specific remedy of clean farming, early destruction of plants, elimination of every refuge of the weevil The bulletin shows that boil weevils | breed in cotton until the frost kills the plant; that migrated weevis become es- | tablished in the late top growth; that many thousands of weevis may occur on each acre of cotton; that weevils hiber- nate as adults that they hibernate, be- ginning with the first killing frost, In cot | ton felds that standing stalks give the most favorable shelter for weevils; that under exceptionally favorable conditions, | over 40 per cent of the fall weevils sur | vive. All of this series of revelations is used to draw the imperative conclusion | that the stalks must be burned, utterly destroyed.
 Three methods of destruction are advo- cated: Burning, blowing under and graz ] ing the stalk. Burning is recommended as the most effective, and, really, is the | only thorough method. Flowing is sait to be unsatisfactory, and grazing as al most ineffective. Burning destroys the weevis in several ways. The weeViis may escape if plowed under.
 The series of circulars will be supple mented by others, which will be dispatch ed without cost to, farmers of the state making application They all contain much of valuable information and recom- l mendation.