iQio] Pediculoides Noxious to Man 29 



Besides this, there were several cases reported to me from 

 northern Maryland, where farmers in running their w^heat 

 through a fanning mill had been simultaneously troubled by a 

 very similar or identical eruptive disease of the skin. In anoth- 

 er instance, a thresherman engaged in feeding the unthreshed 

 grain into the cylinder of the threshing machine was also af- 

 fected by a disease of the skin, with which the attending physi- 

 cian was unfamiliar and who could not classify it with any of the 

 urticaroid dermatitis known to him. With my experience of 

 previous years, it seemed impossible that this Pediculoides 

 should become sufficiently abundant to cause this dermatitis 

 without there being an excessive abundance of some host insect 

 or insects affecting either the straw or the grain itself. Natur- 

 ally, the studies made by me in 1882, led me to suspect that this 

 grain moth Sitotroga cerealella might be responsible for the 

 abundance of the mites. Then, too, the fact that it attacked 

 the larvae of Isosoma grande in wheat straw, led me to suspect 

 that, as this particular species is not known to occur in the vicin- 

 ity of Philadelphia, while its near relative, the joint worm, 

 Isosoma tritici, does occur more or less abundantly over the east- 

 ern part of the country, this latter species, too, might perhaps 

 be involved. 



With a view of finding out something of the abundance of 

 the grain moth in New Jersey, from which State was obtained 

 most but not all of the straw entering into the mattresses men- 

 tioned by Drs. Goldberger and Schamberg, I applied to Dr. John 

 B. Smith, State Entomologist, for information. In reply Dr. 

 Smith was kind enough to send me an advance copy of the report 

 of his department of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment 

 Station for the year 1908, and from this publication it w^as 

 learned that during the summer of that year, owing to favorable 

 weather conditions, this moth developed rapidly in the field 

 and there was great damage to wheat among those farmers who 

 delayed threshing until September or later. Furthermore, a 

 very large percentage of the wheat crop gathered that year 

 became useless for milling purposes and so general was the infes- 

 tation that grain from some localities was entirely barred at 

 mills except when ground for the owner. Some further investi- 

 gations carried on in eastern Pennsyh'ania revealed a very simi- 

 lar condition of affairs. It was the straw of 1908, coming mostly 

 from New Jersey, but a small part of it from Indiana, that en- 



