Tineidae 
more hours to the fumes of carbon bisulphide. This fluid should 
be placed in large quantity in shallow pans at the bottom of the 
disinfecting-chambers, in such a way that it will not come directly 
in contact with the fabrics. Being volatile, the fumes will grad¬ 
ually fill the entire chamber, and will destroy all animal life. 
Inasmuch as carbon bisulphide, as has already been stated else¬ 
where in this book, is, when mixed with atmospheric air, highly 
explosive, no lights should be allowed to come near the chests, 
or the apartment in which the disinfection is taking place. The 
writer has in his own household made it a rule in the spring of 
the year to take all rugs and have them placed in a large chest 
about four feet long, three feet wide, and three feet deep, at the 
bottom of which there is a slatted support beneath which is a long, 
shallow pan. Into this pan the bisulphide is poured. The rugs 
are loosely placed in the chest, and then it is closed tightly and 
they are left there for forty-eight hours. 
The storage of furs and woolen garments during the summer 
months is an important matter. The one thing to be perfectly 
ascertained before placing garments in storage is that they are 
thoroughly disinfected and that not a single female moth capable 
of depositing fertile eggs is present. This fact being known with 
certainty, all that it is necessary to do is to place the garments in 
clean air-tight receptacles and close them up so that nothing can 
get into them. Garments may be put into perfectly tight paper 
bags with all openings pasted shut with a piece of tough paper. 
The boxes in which tailors send home garments are good storage 
receptacles, provided the garments are free from pests when put 
into them and provided every opening in the box is pasted shut 
with a piece of paper. It is not an altogether unwise precaution 
to put in “moth-balls” or crystals of naphthaline or bits of 
camphor, but it must be borne in mind that neither naphthaline 
nor camphor will kill the larvae of moths that have once found 
access to the garments upon which they are in the habit of feed¬ 
ing. A great deal of money has been uselessly expended upon 
such substances, when all that is necessary is simply to insure 
the exclusion of the pests. 
The annual loss occasioned by these minute yet most annoy¬ 
ing insects is vast, and it is not unreasonable to say that their 
mischievous depredations cost the citizens of the United States 
436 
