2 FARMERS” BULLETIN 659, 
therefore, limited entirely to the feeding or larval stage. The killing of 
the moths by the aggrieved housekeeper, while neually based on the 
wrong inference Eve Ghee are actually engaged in eating her woolens, 
is, nevertheless, a most valuable proceeding, because it checks in so 
much the multiplication of the species, which is the sole duty of the 
adult insect. 
The clothes moths all belong to the group of minute Lepidoptera 
known as Tineina, the old Latin name for cloth worms of all sorts, and 
are characterized by very narrow wings fringed with long hairs. The 
common species of clothes moths have been associated with man from 
the earliest times and are thoroughly cosmopolitan. They are all 
probably of Old World origin, none of them being indigenous to the 
United States. That they were well known to the ancients is shown 
by Job’s reference to “a garment that is moth eaten,” and Pliny has 
given such an accurate description of one of them as to lead to the 
easy identification of the species. That they were early introduced 
into the United States 
is shown by Pehr 
a Kalm, a Swedish sci- 
FR SS entist, who took a 
we —— keen interestin house 
pests. He reported 
these tineids to be 
abundant in 1748 in 
Philadelphia, then a 
straggling _—village, 
and says that clothes, 
Fie. 1.— Tinea pellionella: Above, adult; at right, larva; at left, worsted oloves and 
larva in case. Enlarged. (From Riley.) 5 “ 
az Sw fol iH foe iN 
ae “erdewcsursesap typi 4 4 
other woolen stuffs 
hung up all summer were often eaten through and through by the worms, 
and furs were so ruined that the hair would come off in handfuls. 
What first led to the association of these and other household pests 
with man is an interesting problem. In the case of the clothes moths, 
the larve of all of which can, in case of necessity, still subsist on 
almost any dry animal matter, their early association with man was 
probably in the role of scavengers, and in prehistoric times they 
probably fed on waste animal material about human habitations and 
on fur garments. The fondness they exhibit nowadays for tailor-made 
suits and other expensive products of the loom is simply an illustra- 
tion of their ability to keep pace with man in his development in the 
matter of clothing from the skin garments of savagery to the artistic 
products of the modern tailor and dressmaker. 
Three common destructive species of clothes moths occur in this 
country. Much confusion, however, exists in all the early writings 
on these insects, all three species being inextricably mixed in the 
