30 



formations and appearances of the midge, and is accompanied by excellent figures of the 

 male and female with enlargements of parts, which will be of great service in its identi- 

 fication. 



1 



ON THE NEW CAEPET BUG. 



BY DR. HAGEN, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



(The accompanying figure 1 

 represents this insect in its vari- 

 ous stages : a the larva, b the 

 skin of the larva, c the pupa 

 and d the perfect beetle. This 

 cut appeared in our last ' ' An- 

 nual Report," but as the insect 

 is being rapidly disseminated, we 

 reproduce the figure here, so that 

 all our readers may become fa- 

 mihar with its appearance. W.S.) 



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. I bred 

 them here in the Museum, and determined them as Anthremis scrophularice L. The fol- 

 lowing years I had numerous inquiries from Cambridge and Boston in relation to this 

 carpet pest, and I traced about three-fourths of all cases to a large carpet store in Wash- 

 ington 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 

 woollens in the Old World. But there exists enough in the literature. Dr. H. Noerd- 

 linger, in his well-known book, " Die kleinen Feinde der Landwirthschaft," etc., 1855, 

 8vo., p. 90, states as follows : — 



" The common flower-beetle, Anthremis scrophularice, is from April common on 

 many flowers, especially on fruit trees and roses. It is common also in houses, etc., 

 where it can become very obnoxious by the destruction of furs, clothes, animal collec- 

 tions, 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 Noerdliuger's book at random, but it would not be difficult to find 

 such notices in similar books. To show that this pest is not a new one, I add two older 

 authors taken at random. 



F. W. Herbst, Coleoptera, vol. 7, 1797, p. 828, says: — " This beetle is everywhere 

 very common in rooms, on buds, and especially common on tulips. It destroys", as well 

 as its relatives, collections of insects and plants. The larva lives in he houses, like the 

 Derniestes, and destroys all kinds of collections of natural objects, cloths, furs, leather and 

 victuals." The variety of A. scrop/iularue — siitnra (/risea — is described from Europe by 

 Illiger, 1798, p. 398. F. Wiegmann, Handbook der Zoologie, 1832, p. 308 :— " The 

 larva lives on animal matters, and is sometimes very injurious to hides." 



I have ascertained this summer that the carpet bug eats of a piece of cloth consist- 

 ing half of worsted, half of cotton, only the worsted threads, and left the cotton threads 

 uninjured. 



I may add some words concerning the list of the obnoxious insects introduced from 



