The Moths and Butterflies 



375 



white with some grayish on the middle and apex. The eggs are laid 

 by the moths directly on the woolen garments or other articles favored 

 by the larval palate, and several generations may appear each year. The 

 remedies for clothes-moths are the admission of light into closets and dressers, 

 the fumigation of infested clothes or rugs in tight chests with bisulphide 

 of carbon (the fumes will kill every larva and moth in the chest), and the 

 keeping of carpets, rugs, hangings, and garments in cold storage during 

 summer absences from home. Send the things to a 

 cold-storage company with instructions to keep at 

 a temperature below 40° !■'. The insects cannot 

 develop in a temperature below this point. Cloth- 

 covered furniture and cloth-lined carriages, if to be 

 left long unused, may be sprayed once each in April, 

 June, and August with benzine or naphtha. 



A sometimes serious pest of stored grains, espe- 

 cially corn in cribs, is the Angoumois grain-moth, 

 Gelechia ccrealcUa. The larvE bore into the kernels, 

 feeding on the inner starchy matter. I have seen ears 

 of corn in Kansas cribs with every kernel attacked. 

 The larvae feed for about three weeks, then pupate 

 inside the kernel, the moth issuing in a few days. 

 The kernels of infested ears show from one to 

 three little holes from which moths have issued. 

 The adult moth, expanding about half an inch, is 

 light grayish brown, more or less spotted with black, 

 looking much like the case-bearing clothes-moth. 

 The eggs are deposited on grain in the field or bin. 



Numerous Tineid species are known as leaf- 

 miners because of the burrows of the larvae. Leaves 

 of various trees and shrubs often show whitish blotches 

 or lines, which when e.xamined closely are seen to 

 be due to the separation of the epidermis of the leaf 

 from the inner soft tissue or to the complete dis- 

 appearance of the inner tissue. This is the work of 

 the tiny burrowing and feeding "leaf-miners," the 

 larvae of certain Tineid species. Often the miner, 

 a small white grub with the usual eight pairs of legs characteristic of Lepi- 

 dopterous larvae, can be found in his mine, or, perhaps he will have ceased 

 feeding and have transformed to a small light-brown pupa. The species of 

 these leaf-miners are many, and numerous different types of mines may be 

 found; the winding narrow lines called serpentine mines common on wild 

 columbine, the spotted and folded tentiform mines on the wild cherry and the 



Fig. 531. — Pupal cocoons 

 of the apple burrulatrix, 

 Bucculatrix pomijoliella. 

 (Twice natural size.) 



