98 STORED GRAIN AND FLOUR. 
has been generally noticed in this country.* Nor (though to a much 
less degree) its power of injury to grain. With regard to the latter, 
an instance is given—p. 22 of pamphlet referred to—of Rye which was 
left unsold for two years, being found webbed up, and the proprietor, 
not wishing it to be wholly a loss, feeding it to a number of young pigs, 
purchased for the special purpose, most of which died consequently on 
feeding on the almost compactly massed up grain. 
The injury to biscuit is recorded as on a very large scale in con- 
nection with the army supplies, and amounting at times to as much 
as half or the whole of the store. The details and statistics of this 
and the preventive measures requisite are entered on with very 
serviceable clearness at pp. 23-26 of work referred to. 
In an instance under my own observation, which gives some idea 
of the steady power of multiplication of this species in favourable 
circumstances, some felted-up flour was sent me on or about Oct. 7th 
(1895), which then, so far as was noticeable, contained very little 
infestation, and after keeping this in my study during the winter I 
found on examination on April 6th in the following year that the mass 
of flour was webbed firmly together into a piece ten inches long and 
six wide, and of about an inch in depth in the thickest part, and 
there were at that date approximately four hundred moths in the 
box. Some of these were still alive, and from the freshness of their 
plumage obviously only recently developed, and moths continued to 
appear until the end of May, when the specimen passed from my 
possession. 
The damage caused by these F. kithniella caterpillars spinning up 
the flour in which they feed, which appears to be the way in which 
they chiefly hurt us here, is something enormous, from the clots and 
lumps causing stoppages to the machinery and injurious infestation in 
every part of the apparatus and of the mill to which flour can have 
blown. In the words of one of the earliest communications sent me 
on this subject:—‘‘I have got quite a plague of moths in the mill, 
some of which, and worms, I send you; they get into the spouts and 
machinery, and do no end of mischief, both by destroying the silks 
and stopping the flow of flour, &c., in the spouts by spinning thin web 
and hanging there.” With us this results in losses of hundreds of 
pounds, and in the United States of America the losses from the same 
causes, which necessitate frequent and prolonged stoppages, are esti- 
mated at thousands of dollars in large establishments. 
But it is not only in mills that the damage to flour is serious, for 
* See ‘Hphestia ktihniella, Parasite des Blés, des Farines, et des Biscuits’ 
(Parasite of Corn, Flour, and Biscuits]: ‘ Histoire Naturelle du Parasite et Moyen 
de le détruire,’ par J. Danysz. 15, Rue des Saints-Péres, Paris. (All rights 
reserved.) 
