392 HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



known to exist in the southern United States. This 

 beetle has been found by Morgan injuring books in the 

 State Library in Baton Rouge, and it has also been re- 

 ported as seriously injurious to books in a library at Grand 

 Coteau, Louisiana. How widely it is distributed in the 

 United States is not definitely known. Books are liable to 

 injury, however, from these different species of beetles. 



PTILINUS 



Another small beetle of the family Ptinidae occurs in 

 houses and is, at times, quite destructive to the wood- 

 work. Perhaps the best known instance of its work is 

 that given by Westwood. The beetles were found to have 

 attacked a newly made bed-post and so injured it that it 

 had to be burned two or three years afterward. The in- 

 terior of the post had been mined until it was ready to 

 crumble into dust. This happened in the days of the 

 old-fashioned four-post bedstead. In these days of iron 

 and brass bedsteads these tiny beetles must find that 

 their jaws have fallen on hard places. The fashions are 

 changing, however, and the famous wooden furniture of 

 our forefathers seems to be slowly coming back into favor. 

 Thus the beetles may again find their old tastes reviving 

 and the means at hand to satisfy them. 



The species principally at fault, Ptilinus pectinicornis, 

 has a cylindrical, reddish-brown body and a rounded black 

 thorax. The male beetle has most extraordinary antennae 

 for so small an insect. The antennae seem to bear a long 

 fringe on one side. This is due to the fact that each seg- 

 ment of an antenna, except the first two and the last, 

 bears a long lateral appendage. The females, which seem 



