33 



The Pyrales (Pearls) include at least one granary pest. Pi/ralis 

 farinalis, L. (Meal Moth), is a pretty little yellow and dull purple 

 species that one often sees sitting about on the windows and walls 

 of granaries, stables, stores, and even of our houses. The larva 

 feeds in a silken tube, which it spins along some solid substance, 

 such as a wall or even a corn sack, anywhere against its food, so 

 that it can reach out and devour the grain, bran, meal or other 

 cereal produce on which it feeds. Several of its near relations were 

 at one time credited with similar destructive propensities, but recent 

 investigations seem to show that they are rather to be regarded as 

 scavengers. Thus P. glancinalis, L., also suspected of a liking for 

 cereals, appears to prefer dead leaves, decayed thatch, etc. P. 

 costalis, Fab. (Yellow Fringe), that brilliant little bright purple and 

 yellow species sometimes to be seen in numbers on our house walls, 

 is perhaps not quite so innocent, as it undoubtedly has a liking for 

 old hay and clover stacks to which, if sufficiently numerous, it may 

 do a certain amount of damage by webbing the material together 

 with its silken threads. 



Aglosm pintininalis, L. (The Tabljy), a much larger, dull grey- 

 brown creature, long had the credit of devouring greasy horse- 

 clothes, but it has been found that the larva instead of devouring the 

 horse's clothing, really feeds upon the crumbs that fall from his 

 table. It spins a tough silken tube, in which it lives, along any 

 little crevice in wall or floor and eats anj' corn refuse, bran, grass 

 seeds or such like substances as may come in its way. 



The Phycids contain most of our warehouse pests ; many, if not 

 all of them, have probably been introduced into this countr}^ in the 

 course of commerce. Be that as it may, some of them have obtained 

 a firm hold in our stores. Take for example Ephestia kii/niidla, 

 Z. (The Mediterranean Flour Moth). This species was unknown 

 to science until about the year 1877, when a Dr. Kiihn, of Halle, 

 Germany, sent some larvae and moths that he had found in a mill 

 in that town, to Prof. Zeller, who named them after the captor. In 

 1887 the moth was reared from larvae found in wheaten Hour at 

 Stoney Stratford, but the origin of the flour from which they were 

 reared was not known. 



In June of the same year I received a number of larvae from 

 sacks of American flour stored in one of the London docks along 

 side a number of sacks imported from Trieste, which it was found 

 were badly infested, and from which it was believed the larvae had 

 spread. I reared several generations and found that not only did 

 they thrive on wheaten flour but that rice would satisfy them ; 

 indeed so tenacious of life were they that eggs placed in a pillbox 

 with some half-dozen grains of rice enabled a couple of moths to 

 come to maturity. So rapidly did the species spread that within 

 a very few years of its introduction there was hardly a warehouse 

 where flour was stored, or a mill in the country, where it was not 



