68 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [March, 



RAVAGES OF DERMESTES VULPINUS IN CORK. 



By W. J. HOLLAND, Ph.D., F.Z.S., Etc. 



Messrs. Armstrong, Brothers & Company, of Pittsburgh, who 

 are the largest manufacturers of cork in the United States, re- 

 cently sent me a couple of specimens of cork which had been 

 completely riddled by Dcrmestes vulpinus. A bottle cork one 

 inch in diameter and one and one-third inches in length had in it 

 five burrows, or tunnels, each containing an adult Dermestes 

 with the larval exuvium closing the orifice by which entrance 

 had been gained. Messrs. Armstrong Brothers reported to me 

 that a large invoice of cork from Spain had been found to be 

 infested by these insects, occasioning a loss of fully two per cent. 



The destructive character of this beetle is too well known to 

 require any comment, but its presence in cork, which is so largely 

 used as a lining material for the drawers in insect cabinets, sug- 

 gests the propriety of thoroughly poisoning all cork before it 

 is used as the lining of cabinets. In doing this I have found that 

 the best medium is carbon bisulphide, and I have made it a rule 

 in recent years, when I have any cabinet drawers constructed, to 

 have the cork, before it is placed in position, immersed for a time 

 in carbon bisulphide, after which the sheets are allowed to remain 

 in the open air until the fluid has evaporated. This method of 

 destroying not only Dermestes, but specimens of Anobiwn and 

 other cork-infesting beetles is far preferable to the method which 

 has been sometimes recommended of painting the cork or satu- 

 rating it with an alcoholic solution of corrosive sublimate. The 

 effect of corrosive sublimate upon the pins is not good, and in 

 the second place it is a dangerous substance to use, inasmuch as 

 the cork in all properly constructed drawers after it has been 

 glued to the bottoms should be sand-papered by machinery, in 

 doing which clouds of fine dust are raised, some of which inevit- 

 ably enters the nostrils and lung passages of the workmen and 

 is liable to produce irritation. In fact, one builder positively 

 refused to construct a cabinet for me some years ago using cork 

 which had been steeped in a saturated solution of corrosive 

 sublimate. 



