SOME INSECTS INJURIOUS TO STORED GRAIN. 
Stored grain is subject to injury by insects of several kinds, popu- 
larly termed “weevil.” Upward of two score of species occur com- 
monly in granaries, three living throughout their adolescent stages 
within the kernel of the grain. These three are the granary weevil, rice 
weevil, and Angoumois grain moth, the most injurious forms, both at 
home and abroad. The remaining species live on grain in the kernel, 
also when manufactured into flour and meal, and feed as well on 
various other edible products; hence, though of comparatively little 
importance as the authors of primary injury to the seed, they are very 
frequently the cause of serious damage to manufactured products and 
to grain that has suffered first from the attacks of the weevils or grain 
moth and has been kept for a length of time in store. 
Nearly all of the grain-feeding species known in the United States 
have been introduced and are now cosmopolitan, having been distrib- 
uted by commerce to all quarters of the earth, no insects being more 
easily carried from one land to another, since they breed continuously 
for years in the same grain and are unknowingly transported when in 
an immature state in the kernels. Most of our indoor insects are 
indigenous to the Tropics and do not thrive in the cold climate of our 
extreme northern States, but in the Sonth they have become acclimated 
and there do their greatest damage. 
NATURE AND EXTENT OF DAMAGE. 
Aside from the loss in weight occasioned by the ravages of insects, 
grain infested by them is unfit for human consumption, and has been 
known to cause serious illness. Nor is such grain desirable for food for 
live stock or for seed, its use in the latter capacity being apt to be fol- 
lowed by a diminution in the yield of a crop. 
Of the insect injury to stored grain it has been estimated of Texas 
alone that there is an annual loss of over a million dollars, and that 
nearly 50 per cent of the corn of that State is annually destroyed by 
weevils and rats. The loss from granary insects to the corn crop in 
Alabama in 1893 was estimated at $1,671,382, or about 10 per cent. 
There are seven other States subject to the same atmospheric and 
other influences as Alabama and producing in the aggregate a somewhat 
larger average yield of corn. Estimating the annual loss in the same 
proportions, we would have tor these eight Southern States, viz: South 
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