26 



without being: disturbed. Some of the elevator legs have been sa 

 closed up that there was scarcely room for the elevator to travel, 

 and many of the spouts have been so completely choked up that 

 it was necessary to take them down and remove the web, larvsej 

 and pupae before the stream of stuff could pass through them." 



The magnitude of the attack depends somewhat on the time of 

 the year and upon the nature of the products manufactured. In 

 the eastern states, aud also in California, the larvse are most 

 abundaut during the summer months, but in California the climate- 

 is so even that but little variation is noticed at different times of 

 the year. 



The larvse are particularly found of products manufactured from 

 rice, and in mills where this is the principal cereal handled that 

 department is worse infested than others. Buckwheat flour is 

 also a favorite, and the larvse will pass over oatmeal and wheat 

 flfHir in order to get to this product; but in mills where rice and 

 buckwheat are not handled, they attack any cereal product. The 

 parent insect may deposit her eggs in any part of the mill where 

 the young larvae can find food, but in the great majority of cases 

 the eggs are laid where the conditions are most favorable for the 

 development of the young larvae. The spouts and elevators are 

 therefore worse infested than other pnrts of a mill. In a mill 

 where flour is stored in sacks, the female pushes her ovipositor 

 through the meshes of the sacks and places her eggs within the 

 flour. I have carefully observed this point, and have found that 

 three fourl-hs of the eggs are deposited in this way, when such 

 places are chosen for their deposition. Such flour may be per- 

 fectly free from larvae when sent out from the mill, but in a few 

 dnys the young creatures hatch from the eggs within it, and the 

 flour is soon matted together and is unfit for use. The larvae get 

 into most mannfacfured products in this manner, the eggs of the 

 moth being usually packed with the material. 



It has been reported by some European writers that the larvae 

 attack the bolting-cloth, but I have made no similar observations. 

 I have found many larvae on and about the screens in mills, but 

 have never seen one attack the cloth. In my breeding cage ex- 

 periments I have no difiiculty whatever in this direction. All my 

 cages are covered with fine Swiss muslin, and I have no trouble 

 in keeping the larvae within. To see whether, in confinement, 

 they would attack bolting cloth, I procured some of this material from 

 a miller in California, and covered two cages with it. The larvae 

 matured, and pupated in most cases in the top of the cage,, 

 usually forming their cocoons on the under surface of the cloth,^ 

 but in no case was it punctured by them. I am of the opinion 

 that in the cnses reported the injury to the bolting-cloth was due 

 to that cosmopolitan creature, the cadelle ( Ten* hrioides mauri- 

 ianica). I have seen both larva aud adult of this insect cutting 

 boltingr-cloth, and have found it in every mill I have inspected. 

 In California it is known as the "bolting-cloth beetle." 



The Ephestia larvae thrive best on the more glutinous cereals,. 

 but they infest all manufactured foods prepared from wheat, 

 oats, rice, Indian corn, and buckwheat, and will attack the grain> 



