PAET VI. GENERAL INFORMATION. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

 INSECT PESTS AND POISONING. 



THE PESTS. If an island of bare rock should be born to-day 

 in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and an nnpoisoned skin of 

 bird or mammal laid down upon it to-morrow morning 1 , I would 

 wager that Dcnnestes lardarius would find that skin before sun- 

 set. If you were to prepare a skin without poison, and lock it 

 up immediately in the bowels of a burglar-proof safe, not to be 

 opened for six months, at the end of that time you would find it 

 swarming with Denncstcs. If you ever omit to poison anything 

 in the shape of a vertebrate specimen, be sure your sin and the 

 beastly bugs will find you out. 



DERMESTES. The greatest enemy of the zoological collector 

 and conservator, and one which is world-wide in its distribution, 

 is a small beetle, one-third of an inch in length, commonly 

 called the " bacon beetle." Its flight is rather feeble, but " it 

 gets there just the same." The most common species, Derm <-.<- 

 teslarda/riu8 } is of a dark, dirty-brown color, with a broad, trans- 

 verse band of dull gray encircling the middle of the body. The 

 imago is not of much consequence as a destroyer, but the lar- 

 va, a nasty, hairy, brown-backed, and white-bellied abomina- 

 tion half an inch long, and with an appetite like a hog. is the 

 incarnation of all that is pestiferous. A skull that has been 

 " roughed out " and put away without poisoning will soon be 

 literally swarming with /A /'///r.vA.s larvae, and half buried with 

 the brown, powdery excrementation they leave behind. If the 

 curator ever sees a fine, brown dust falling in little heaps out 



