384 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. 



about them. Nevertheless, a few remarks on some of the 

 most remarkable or destructive of these moths may not be 

 wholly useless or unacceptable to those persons for whom this 

 treatise was particularly designed. 



The largest insects of this tribe belong to the group called 

 Crambid^, or Crambians, among which the bee-moth or wax- 

 moth is to be placed. This pernicious insect was well known 

 to the ancients, and we find it mentioned, under the name of 

 Tinea, in the works of Virgil and Columella,* old Roman 

 WTiters on husbandry. In the winged state, the male and 

 female differs so much in size, color, and in the form of their 

 fore wings, that they were supposed, by Linnceus and by 

 some other naturalists, to be different species, and accordingly 

 received two different names.f To avoid confusion, it will be 

 best to adopt the scientific name given to the bee-moth by 

 Fabricius, who called it GaUeria cereana, that is, the wax 

 Galleria, because, in its caterpillar state, it eats beeswax. 

 Doubtless it was first brought to this country, with the com- 

 mon hive-bee, from Europe, where it is very abundant, and 

 does much mischief in hives. Very few of the Tinece exceed 

 or even equal it in size. In its perfect or adult state it is a 

 winged moth or miller, measuring, from the head to the tip of 

 the closed wings, from five eighths to three quarters of an inch 

 in length, and its wings expand from one inch and one tenth 

 to one inch and four tenths. The feelers are two in number; 

 and the tongue is very short, and hardly visible. The fore 

 wings shut together flatly on the top of the back, slope steeply 

 downwards at the sides, and are turned up at the end, some- 

 what like the tail of a fowl. This resemblance probably sug- 

 gested the name of the genus, GaUeria, which seems to have 

 been derived from the Latin word for a fowl. The male is of 

 a dasty gray color; his fore wings are more or less glossed and 

 streaked with purple-brown on the outer edge, they have a 

 few dark brown spots near the inner margin, and they are 

 scalloped or notched inwardly at the end; his hind wings are 



* Vir^^il. Georgic IV., line '24G. Columella. Husbandry, Book IX., chap. 14. 

 t Torlrix ccreana, the male ; Tinea mellonella, the female. 



