3 
Sitotroga cerealella (fig. 3), in southern Illinois, where Messrs. Halliday 
Brothers, of Cairo, growers and shippers of wheat, were at that time 
experiencing considerable trouble from the ravages of this grain 
moth, not only in their grain elevators but also in barges loaded 
with wheat to be shipped by river to New Orleans and thence exported 
by steamer. 
It was during these investigations that this mite was discovered 
attacking the larve of the grain moth. As the original publication 
containing the author’s observations is becoming more and more 
difficult to obtain, that portion relating to the occurrence of this 
mite is given herewith in full: 
Pediculoides (Heteropus) ventricosus, Newport. About the 12th of October, 1882, 
a sack of wheat infested with larvee of the grain moth was received from southern 
Illinois, which, for want of time, was put aside for future inspection. On the 13th 
Cc 
Fig. 3.—Angoumois grain moth (Sitotroga cerealella): a, Egg and egg-mass; 
b, larva in grain of wheat; c, larva; d, pupa; e, f, moth. Enlarged. 
(a, e-f, After Chittenden; b, original.) 
of November, while examining the grains containing larve, I noticed, in a lot of 
fifty, three in which the worms were dead, and on them were numbers of globular, 
yellow objects, which proved to be a species of mite, Pediculoides (Heteropus) ventri- 
cosus Newport. Knowing nothing of the predaceous habits of these mites, and the 
limited literature at hand throwing little ight upon the matter, I did not pay much 
attention to the fact of their occurrence until the 12th of December, when upon 
examining 100 grains with respect to the effect of heat on the larva, I found 14 of the 
latter infested by these mites. 
In the meantime I had learned that this mite was known to be of predaceous habit, 
in both England and France, having been first discovered by Newport, in 1849, in 
the nests of Anthophora retusa, collected at Gravesend, England, and afterwards 
described by him under its present name. It had also been found in France, in 
1868, by Jules Lichtenstein, of Montpellier, and described by him under the name of 
Physogaster larvarum. This gentleman found it in his breeding cages, which it so 
completely overran that, as he informs me, he could not for six months breed a single 
specimen of Hymenoptera, of Buprestidse, or Cerambycide, or of some Lepidoptera. 
[Cir. 118] 
