The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1918-08-06

forever, will need every pound of
cotton that the South can possibly
grow. The remedy is not a difficult
one, nor costly one. 1t consists in
poisoning the drop of dew or rain
on the cotton plant from which the
weevll gets his drinking water. The
poisoned powder is put on the plant
| IN what is known as a dust spray.
The powder is exceedingly fine grain
| ed. The best spray machine is prob
ably the Monarch Buster. 1t is a
| hand machine which can spray four
or five acres a day, and is already in
use as against cotton worms and in
Irish potato fields 1t is slung over
the shoulder and a wheel operated by
the right hand sends the powder from
the container six or seven feet. The
operator simply takes down the mid
die of a cotton row, spraying the
plants on either side in the one oper-
alton, and then, at the end of a row,
skips one middle and comes back the
second row.
There is no doubt that dry dust
spraying is going to largely super
sede all wet methods of spraying in
| viz 1uOAlOs HIS VIOlldICII DuSI spray
er has a large future for itself; the
cost of it is SIS. The best poison
for the Mexican boil weevil is either
, q dry-hydrogen lead arsenate powder
containing not less than 80 per cent.
: of arsenic pentoxid, or a calcium ar
senate powder, containing at least AZ
per cent. of arsenic pentoxid. The
. ordinary tripeumble form of lead
| L. L l. e
fective. The above preparation is
: somewhat cheaper, too, than arsenate
: of lead.
When to Apply Poison.
The time of applying the poison
= is between p. m. and 9 a. m. One
: application has been known to re-
: duce an Sc per cent. puncture of
: squares down to SO per cent. In
+, heavy infestations three to five sprays
l may be necessary per season. Four
or five pounds of the poisoned pow
5 der is necessary per acre. These ex-
= periments for three or four years
: have been made by Mr.. B. R. Coad,
of the national bureau of entomolo-
! gy, and it was he who found that Wee
! wills, while not hard water drinkers,
: drink regularly from the dew or rain,
collected in drops on the leaves of
the cotton plant. Large amounts of
poisons have been experimental
with.
Continuous experiments have been
made in Louisiana, Mississippi and
Arkansas. Even in the small check
| plats it has been found that yields
of from $50 to 1000 pounds more of
1seed cotton per acre can be raised on
sprayed areas than on the unsprayed
plants. Of course, In the small areas
weevils from surrounding unsprayed
plats move quickly in but even the |
| small check plats as sprayed gave an |
| increased outturn of 100 to 300 |
| pounds of cotton lint per acre. In !
usual cases as high as so per cent. |
| of increase was made.
When Best Results Are Obtained.
The best results obtained have
| been when the whole plantation was
/ sprayed because there were no con-
/ tiguous weevils ready to come in. In |
fact, in some cases where the whole |
| plantation was sprayed only one
spraying was found necessary. A |
great part of cotton is not seriously |
infested with weevils until some time
after mid-season, and we'll on into
August. Spraying should begin |
wherever the most heavily infested
spots are to be found.
These data, as per above, come out |
with all the authority of the United |
States government. To my mind it is |
the most important announcement, |
probably, that the agricultural de-
partment has ever made since it be-
gan. The South itself and the south
ern cotton growers are not the only
ones interested vitality in this boil
weevil control problem, for it is a !
problem that concerns every man,
woman and child in this world who
wears clothing.
Price of powdered Calcium arse
nate" containing not less than AZ per
cent. arsenic pentoxid, is in 100-tb
packages sic a 10 and in 25-fb
packages 32c a ID.
n. L. WILLET.
Augusta. Ga,