340 TAXIDERMY AND ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING. 



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of any part of a mounted specimen, lie may know that Dermestes 

 larvae are at work. 



Not long ago the National Museum was visited by another 

 species of the bacon beetle, Dermestes moculatiis, a gray-colored 

 variety, beside which his congener seemed harmless and inof- 

 fensive. Maculatus was an unmitigated terror. He disdained 

 to graze modestly on the outside of a specimen, as did lar- 

 darius, but simply began to eat wherever he "lit," and went 

 straight in to a depth of an inch or so, as if shot out of a gun. 

 An unhappy stuffed monkey that once crossed the track of this 

 little fiend had half a dozen neat round holes eaten through 

 the dry skin of his side, and straight on into the hard tow filling 

 for quite an inch. A gimlet could not have done the work half 

 so well. The most ridiculous thing was that this insatiable 

 little monster attacked a plaster cast, and bored it full of holes 

 also ! Fortunately for the National Museum, the stay of this 

 highly interesting stranger was of brief duration. He came in 

 1885, and vanished that same year so far as my observations 

 went. 



MOTHS. Next in destructiveness are the tiny moths, of which 

 four species are to be fought in the museum and the household. 

 These are the clothes moth ( Tinea jflavifrontella), the fur moth 

 (T. pelionella), the carpet moth (T. tapetzeUa), and the grain 

 moth ( T. granella). The perfect moth is of course by prefer- 

 ence a night-flying insect, and very seldom flies in the daytime 

 except when disturbed. The imago is harmless, but the larva 

 a tiny, white worm no thicker than a pin, and about one-tenth 

 of an inch in length will soon shave the hair off an unpoi- 

 soned elk or deer head more smoothly than you could do it 

 with the best razor ever made. Of course moth larva? are most 

 active and destructive during the breeding season the warm 

 months from May to October but in warm rooms they some- 

 times keep at work all through the winter. 



In one sense the moth is the zoologist's most dreaded foe, 

 for the reason that its work is so subtle and unseen. Often the 

 first intimation the victim has of the presence of his enemy is 

 when dusting a favorite head he suddenly knocks off a section 

 of hair half a foot square, exposing underneath the smooth, bare 

 skin covered with fine gray dust. The larvae of the moth attack 



