Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-07-20

a THOUGH IL may seem ridicu-
M lous to spend thousands of dol
~ lars annually to prevent one
- "a little moth egg that could pass
through the eye OF cambric needle
from entering the country, the machin-
cry of the Departments of Agriculture
State, Treasury and Post Of1ce are CO.
operating to keep out that little pest
the pink cotton boll-worm.
The same agencies are united TO ex-
ciude by quarantine diseased potatoes
trees, shrubs and plants, and in so do
ing are accomplishing far more than
one would think toward holding down
the cost of living.
~
The general staff which conducts
the defense against plant disease is
known as the federal horticultural
board and is composed of Ave high ofi-
ciais of appropriate bureaus of the De-
partment of Agriculture.
All along the fertile valley of the
Nile, where the luxuriant Egyptian cot
ton grows, planters are more worried
over the ruinous work of the pink boil
worm In their cotton fields than they
are over the greater devastation of the
European war.
In the CONSERVATION caused by the
loss of fifth of their crop they have
thrown up the barriers and are exclud-
ing all foreign eotton-an unnecessary
measure against the pest, with it's life
cycle of destruction so firmly in possess
sion of their fields; but directed against
any further insect invaders.
The pink boll-worm was taken to
Egypt from India, where it's wretched
family billions are still leaving their
baleful impress.
The tiny egg is deposited by the
mother moth unon the growing plant
leaf, which becomes the food of the
larvae, emerging in ten days from the
egg. Thence il eats its way into the
heart of the cotton boil, where in this
destructive stage it spends about twen-
ty days. until full grown, when II is
nearly half an inch long.
II has been feeding upon the cotton
seeds, and when about to transform
into the .pupa and become a moth again
II occupies the hull, from which it has
devoured the kernel. The worms pink
ish color and it's place of living have
given it the name pink boll-worm."
~
In about two weeks more the moth
emerges, a fragile insect about three
quarters of an inch in expanse, now a
grayish brown color with darker
spletehes. In three or four days it
deposits it's eggs and lives ten days or
more; doing harm all its life and leav-
ing behind it a multiplied evil sue
cession.
While the annual yield of American
Sea Island cotton, the best in the world,
is by no means enough to make all the
spool cotton, automobile tires and other
textiles requiring a grade better than
that of ordinary upland cotton, it is
somewhat surprising to learn that S00,-
600 bales of Egyptian cotton contain
mated by the pink boll-worm are i'm
ported with impunity to the United
States.
This was made possible by a sys-
tenn of fumigation originated by the
board and worked out on a commercial
scale by its experts, by which every
bale is disinfected before distribution.
The cotton-a couple of hundred
bales at a time-is placed in a great
horizontal cylinder of heavy structural
steel, Theoretically sealed and then the
air is pumped out until there is almost
vacuum within. Hydrocyanic acid
gas is then admitted, and although the
bales are compressed before shipment
until they are almost as hard as blocks