Foes of Clothes and Carpets. 131 



garbage heap outside his dwelling quite a Klondike, so 

 mighty a hunter was he. It was, perhaps, an error to get 

 into furs which had not been thrown away, as Tinea sup- 

 posed, but merely discarded for the summer; but how 

 was the moth to know that it wasn't in the contract? As 

 man progressed and found out how to weave cloth out of 

 wool, Tinea kept pace with him, and now has as fine a 

 taste in woolen stuffs as he. 



That this moth has been long in the business is evident 

 from the fact that the adult has no mouth. Also it is so 



Fig. 30. Carpet oeetle, or " Buffalo moth"; a, larva; b, pupa; c, pupa, ventral 



view; d, adult. 



set in its ways that though houses are nowadays equably 

 warmed by steam in winter, it still takes a vacation then, 

 and only begins work with warm w r eather. Not so witn 

 the so-called " buffalo moth." In warm houses it works 

 all the year round. Carpets are its specialty, and it finds 

 that the Northern States afford a fine field for its activi- 

 ties. They haven't got as far as polished floors in many 

 of those States, and it gnaws along the cracks to its 

 heart's content and the housewife's discontent. If it 

 ruins other people's goods with impunity, it has as fine a 

 sense of economy as the cockroach. It molts fre- 

 quently, and thriftily eats up its own cast-off skin. It 

 is not a pretty beast at all. Its larva is about half an 



