274 



HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



attack, at least not at first, but tend to confine themselves 

 to the outside. Later, after casting their hairy skins 

 several times, they burrow farther into the meat, where 

 they change to pupae. Moreover, they seem to prefer 

 the fatty portions more than the lean muscular parts. 



It has been observed that the larvae 

 (Fig. 88) tend to infest hams that 

 are beginning to spoil rather than 

 •fresh ones. 



From the meager and fragmentary 

 accounts of the life history of this 

 insect that we have it may be in- 

 ferred that the larder beetle may 

 reproduce itself, under favorable 

 conditions, quite fast and that there 

 may be several generations during a 

 season. Miss Heustis tells us that 

 she placed four beetles, three males 

 and one female, in a glass jar with 

 a piece of meat on which she had 

 found them feeding. She saw the 

 female deposit eggs on the meat, but had to leave before 

 they hatched. She was gone five weeks and on her 

 return found a large and flourishing colony of larvae, most 

 of them full-grown. Horn found that the pupal stage 

 lasted three or four days to a week or more, depending 

 upon the temperature. Thus it is evident that a genera- 

 tion may be produced in the neighborhood of 45 to 50 days, 

 and there may be four or five generations in a season. 



Lintner quotes the following letter from a correspondent, 

 which gives a good idea of the injuries caused by this 

 insect : — 



Fig. 88. — Larva of the 

 larder beetle. (X 3.) 



