Smartest way for man to fight the insects who rival him for the earth's bounty is to turn insect against insect. The wasp Microbracon mellitor assassinates boll weevils (which last year destroyed 12-14% of the South's cotton), so this week an army of these stiletto-bearing flyers is being propagated at the University of Texas.* The Texas wasp dashes among cotton rows, seeks out bolls full of weevil larvae, plunges her stiletto into each grub, forces an egg through the hollow tube into each paralyzed victim, then flits on to another boll. In two days the wasp egg hatches into a grub...
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