Insect Pests of House and Garden. 



655 



moths often use cold-storage houses for protection. A temperature 

 at 49 degrees Fahr. stops all work of the insect but does not kill it; but 

 an alternation of a low temperature with a comparatively high one 

 invariably kills. 



II. The Carpet-Beetle. 



The evidence indicates that about 1874 carpet dealers in New York 

 and Boston almost simultaneously introduced from Europe, and 

 shipped to inland cities, the insect which has come to be a common 

 and most serious pest in carpets, woolens and furs throughout the Nor- 

 thern United States. In Europe it is a museum rather than a carpet 

 pest, and has a similar habit in San Francisco. In some localities it 

 is popularly 

 known as the 

 " carpet-bug " 

 or " buffalo- 

 moth," both of 

 which are mis- 

 nomers, for the 

 insect is not a 

 true bug which 

 sucks its food, 

 like aphids, 

 and it is not 

 a moth, but a 

 beetle {c in 

 Fig. 22). 



Most house- 

 wives are familiar only with the larva (a in Fig. 22) or destructive stage 

 of this pest. The active, brown larva is about a quarter of an inch or 

 less in length, and clothed with stiff, brown hairs, which are longer 

 around the sides and still longer at the ends than on the back. All 

 the year round in well-heated houses, but more frequently in summer 

 and fall, these larvae are found feeding upon carpets and woolen goods, 

 working in a hidden manner from the under surface, sometimes making 

 irregular holes, but more frequently following the line of a floor crack, 

 cutting long slits in the carpet. Early in the spring many of these hairy 

 larvae transform inside their own skins {h in Fig. 22) through tender, 

 yellow pupae into the adult insect or beetle. The pretty, little beetles 

 {c in Fig. "22) about three-sixteenths of an inch long, look like, and are 



Fig. 22. Carpet-beetle — (a) larva; (b) pupa in larval skin; 

 {c) the adult or beetle. All miich enlarged. 



