SB 
818 
C57 
ENT 
8 R NO. 36, SECOND SERIES, REVISE. Issued January 15, 1908. 
nited States Department of Agriculture, 
BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY, 
L. O. HOWARD, Entomologist and Chief of Bureau. 
THE TRUE CLOTHES MOTHS. 
(Tinea pellionella et al.) 
By C. L. MARLATT 
e ’ 
Entomologist and Acting Chief in Absence of Chief. 
The destructive work of the larve of the small moths commonly 
known as clothes moths, and also ag carpet moths, fur moths, ete., in 
woolen fabrics, fur, and similar material during the warm months of 
summer in the North, and in the South at any season, is an altogether 
too common experience. The preference they so often show for woolen 
or fur garments gives these insects a much more general interest than 
is perhaps true of any other household pest. 
The little yellowish or buff-colored moths sometimes seen flitting 
about rooms, attracted to lamps at night, or dislodged from infested 
garments or portieres, are themselves harmless enough, and in fact their 
mouth-parts are rudimentary, and no food whatever is taken in the 
winged state. The destruction occasioned by these pests is, therefore, 
limited entirely to the feeding or larval stage. The killing of the 
moths by the aggrieved housekeeper, while usually based on the wrong 
inference that they 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 Kalm, a Swedish scientist, 
who took a keen interest in house pests. He reported these tineids 
to be abundant in 1748 in Philadelphia, then a straggling village, and 
says that clothes, worsted gloves, and 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. 
