The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1921-12-07

such applications, he has already pick
ed about bale of cotton per acre
! and believes that he will get at least
half bale more. From the looks of his
helds at the time of my visit in Oc-
toDer, have no reason to doubt his
statements.
Used Rabbits Strategy
But this is getting along too fast
After making all this investment in
labor, seeds and fertilizer NIr. Holder
says that he was in the same position
as Uncle Remus' rabbit, he was "just
Nle&ged ter climb q tree" So he was
compelled to fight the weevil He heard
about boil weeyil trap that had been
USED successfully. SO he bought some
OF the traps and when his cotton was
about a foot high, he had his hands to
30 over the Solids trapping the weeyils.
! L won't try to give an accurate de-
scription of this trap. but it is fixed
go that it goes down over each side
OF tie cotton plants. Hanging down
from The top are two sets Of small
l,nger-like boards that knock the
weevil. At the back side extending
along the trap are two little metal
troughs containing ferosene or some
otaer substance into which the weevil
{ Will fall and be killed. A small wire
protector keeps tho cotton leaves from
lillO tuC hcTOSSne.
f, by using the boys and women in
handling these traps and taking the
cotton row by row when it was a
foot high, Mr. Holder reduced some
what his early infestation and thus
gave his cotton a start over the pest.
Alr. Holder is not yet convinced
that trapping the early weevils is a
good way to secure control over the
pcstii but he does believe that the adult
wecvils must be killed in some manner
as soon as they come from ihbcr-
nation. BY trapping, picking, and US
ing the swcetened poisoned mixture
when the first adults come from the
woods and other witncr quarters, he
| prevented a spread of the insects over
his entire cotton fields, and to this, in
large measure. does ne attribute his
success in growing cotton this past
season
Poison to Rescue
when the trapping was over, the
wcevils soon were getting thick
again. Mr. Holder know that while the
cotton was still small he could use
the poisoned sweetened mixture to
some advantage. SO he bought a
supply of the calcium arsenate and
made up formula as follows: Ten
pounds OF calcium arsenate, ten
gallons of water. two packages ice
cream powder, two ounces Of sacca-
rhin.
| The packages of ice cream powder
hcld pound each and were Of kind
'hat, as Mr.. Holder says, looks some
what like matted milk" This mixture
was sticky and somewhat of the
! iirst MI. Holder had this daubed on
the plants with a mop-like contrlyance.
l.; ~
and great waste OF labor. so he be-
gan experimenting and finally enyolved
small hand machine for putting
on the mixture. This consisted of a
small tin bucket soldered on top of
tin sled-like affair that could be
easily carried along over the tops of
the young cotton plants. In tho bot
tom of the bucket were two small holes
from which were dropped two flannel
Wicks. AT the end OF each wick a small
stone was tied to mako it hang down
and so give each plant dose of the
, ,sweetened mixture. With man going
along the row holding this machine
! Just so that it would give each plant
a good treatment, and with the
younger boys on the place keeping this
lnachine supplied with the poison,
Mr.. Holder was able to treat a large
area more successfully than by the
old method.
he found also that his sweetened
poison formed kind OF "honey dew"
ION each plant and that the weevils
seemed to take fancy for this both
as a food and a beverage. Three days
after putting on this poison, Mr..
Holder got all hands to picking up the
fallen squares and then in about six
days he went over the field with his
busting machines. He used the rotary
hand busters which distributed the
calcium arsenate very effectively. He
noticed that the poison dust stuck to
the plant much better where 1t had
previously been treated with the
swectened mixture.
Picked Up Squares
| The cotton was given three dustings
of about four or Ave days intervals
Unfortunately, between the second and
third dustings he had to wait nine
days because Of rain, but even then
he had the fallen squares picked up
and he continued to have these
squares picked up and burned. Once
he decided to stop for few days,
so ell let the little negro boys and
| girls get ready for school, but then
he heard OF another infestation in
another field, so out came all hands to
pick up squares and dust again until
this outbreak was more or less con-
,trolled.
Mr. Holder carried on the work of
picking up fallen squares until the
day before he started picking cotton,
then he Quit. He says his labor had
one Saturday vacation in July and
another bn1f-dov IN Auoucf fTbo ,,o