226 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
The brand I have most frequently used is a long-cut, the ''Richmond 
Gem Curly Cut tobacco," which I found to be pure and not flavored, but 
frequently infested by the beetle. It is sold either in tin boxes containing 
one or one-half pound each, or in paper packages containing four ounces 
each, both kinds of packages being by no means tight enough to keep out 
the beetles. It is now at once apparent that the paper packages are much 
less and more rarely infested than the tobacco kept in tin boxes. After 
watching the habits of the larva, I think the explanation of this difference 
is as follows : The paper packages are always as loosely packed as pos- 
sible, so as to increase their size, whereas the tobacco in tin boxes is very 
tightly packed. It is just in the most compressed places of a box where 
the larvae prefer to live, and they dislike to be among the loosely packed 
particles. It would, in my opinion, be a preventive against the continuous 
breeding of the beetle if the tobacco were packed as loosely as possible. 
The damage done by this species to smoking tobacco is in reality a small 
one, since the larva is not a rapacious feeder,* and, moreover, a little ex- 
perience will show that, unless very numerous, the larvae do not feed so 
much on the finely-cut tobacco leaves as on the hard pieces of leaf stems 
which are usually found in most brands and sold as tobacco leaves. On 
such pieces of leaf stems the eggs are also preferably laid, and in them 
the larvse excavate a kind of cradle wherein to change to chrysalids. A 
really carefully prepared long-cut tobacco, consisting only of finely-cut 
leaves, e. g., the Turkish tobacco and similar expensive brands, will never 
be found to be badly infested. 
The larvae usually live in the midst or at the bottom of the box, and 
they are not so readily observed, since they do not move, and are always 
covered with a brownish dust; the beetles are, however, very active, and, 
unless in the act of ovipositing, have the habit of congregating oh the top 
of the tobacco. 
Mr. Howard said that Mr. Lugger had proposed to cover the 
tobacco at night as a prevention. 
Mr. Schwarz said that the beetles fly both by day and by night. 
JUNE 6, 1889. 
Eight persons present. President Schwarz in the chair. 
Mr. Ashmead read a letter which he had recently received from 
Col. D. Redmond, of St. Nicholas, Fla., describing the appear- 
* With cigars and cigarettes the damage is not done so much by the 
feeding of the larva as by the boring of the beetle from one cigar or ciga- 
rette into another. 
