THE TRUE CLOTHES MOTHS. 5 
and in confinement has been successfully reared on this rather dainty 
food substance. The report that it feeds on dried plants in herbaria 
is rather open to question, as its other recorded food materials are 
all of animal origin. 
Frequently this species is a very troublesome pest in museums, ‘par- 
ticularly in collections of the larger moths. Prof. F. M. Webster, of 
the Bureau of Entomology, once had some of his large moths badly 
riddled by its larve, and Hagen also records it as feeding on insect 
collections. Riley reared it in conjunction with the Angoumois 
grain moth?! from grain, it bemg apparent that its larve had sub- 
sisted on dead specimens of the grain moth. It is very likely to attack 
large Lepidoptera on the spreading board, and has, in fact, been 
carried through several generations on dried specimens of moths. 
Its general animal- feeding 
habit is further indicated by the 
interesting case reported by Dr. 
J.C. Merrill, U.S. A., who sub- 
mitted a sample can of beef 
meal which had been rejected 
as ‘‘weevilly.”” The damage 
proved to be due to the larve of 
Tineola biselliella, and goes to 
substantiate the theory already 
advanced that clothes moths apie 
: : > A Fig. 2.— Tineola biselliella: Moth, larva, cocoon, and 
were scavengers in their earliest emipty pupa'skin, Enlarged. (From Riley.) 
association with man. 
The larva of this moth constructs no case, but spins a silky, or more 
properly cobwebby, path wherever it goes. When full grown it builds 
a cocoon of silk, intermixed with bits of wool, resembling somewhat 
the ease of pellionella, but more irregular in outline. Within this it 
undergoes its transformation to the chrysalis, and the moth in emerg- 
ing leaves its pupal shell projecting out-of the cocoon as with the pre- 
ceding species. 
THE TAPESTRY MOTH. 
The tapestry moth? (fig. 3) is rare in the United States. It is 
much larger than either of the other two species, measuring three- 
fourths inch in expansion of wings, and is more striking in coloration. 
The head is white, the basal third of the forewings black, with the ex- 
terior two-thirds of a creamy white, more or less obscured on the 
middle with gray; the hind wings are pale gray. 
This moth normally affects rather coarser and heavier cloths than the 
smaller species and is more apt to occur in carpets, horse blankets, and 
1 Sitotroga cerealella Oliv. 2 Trichophaga tapetzella L. 
