Cjje dtka&ian ^ntomobpi 



VOL. X. LONDON, ONT., SEPTEMBER, 1878. jNo. 9 



ON THE NEW CARPET BUG. 



BY DR. H. HAGEN, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



Perhaps a few additions to Mr. J. A. Lintner's very interesting article 

 will not be out of place. In 1872 the late Mrs. W. P. L. Garrison came 

 to visit the Museum, and told me about an insect destroying the carpets 

 in Buffalo, N. Y., and named there " the Buffalo pest." I had not then 

 heard anything about the insect, and Mrs. Garrison, after her departure, 

 was kind enough to send me some living specimens from Buffalo. 1 

 bred them here in the Museum, and determined them as Anthrenus 

 scrop hula rice L. The following years I had numerous inquiries from Cam- 

 bridge and Boston in relation to this carpet pest, and I traced about 

 three-fourths of all cases to a large carpet store in Washington St. in 

 Boston, where the carpets were bought, and what ought not to have been 

 done, they were directly laid in the rooms, without beating them before 

 strongly and disinfecting them in some way. 



Mr. Lintner was unable to find any record of its preying upon carpets 

 or other woolens in the Old World. But there exists enough in the 

 literature. Dr. H. Noerdlinger, in his well-known book, " Die kleinen 

 Feinde der Landwirthschaft," etc., 1855, 8to., p. 90, states as follows : 



" The common flower-beetle, Anthrenus scropliularice, is from April 

 common on many flowers, especially on fruit trees and roses. It is com- 

 mon also in houses, etc., where it can become very obnoxious by the 

 destruction of furs, clothes, animal collections, and even leather and dried 

 plants. The obnoxious larva, which naturalists should take care to 

 avoid, is common in closets and rooms in the attic, where it finds dead 

 flies and from whence it likes to enter the other rooms." 



I have taken Noerdlingefs book at random, but it would not be ditfi- 



