i'ineidae 



In the colder parts of the country winter arrests development 

 temporarily. 



The insect is widely distributed all over the continent, and in 

 fact all over the world. 



Genus TRICHOPHAGA Ragonot 



(l) Trichophaga tapetzella Linnaeus. (The Carpet-moth.) 

 The nature and habits of this species are very closely allied to 

 those of the last two species of which we have spoken. Like 



them, it was originally intro- 

 duced into America from the 

 Old World. It differs from 

 them in the larval state in 

 that, instead of simply mak- 

 ing a cocoon for itself out of 

 bits of hair as the Clothes- 

 moth, or forming a movable 



Fig. 254.-7-. tapetzella. (After Riley.) caS f()r j tse ] f ag the p ur _ 



moth, it weaves together, out of the debris of the material in which 

 it is carrying on its ravages, long galleries lined inside with strands 

 of silk. These long, tortuousgalleries, cutthroughthepileof carpets, 

 are familiar objects to the careful housewife, whose horror and anx- 

 iety have often been expressed to the writer. It is one of the sad 

 prerogatives of the entomologist to be made from time to time 

 the recipient of the household woes of his neighbors, who dis- 

 cover that the moth and the buffalo-bug "corrupt," and that the 

 white ant and the cockroach "steal." 



The perfect insect, as shown in the annexed cut, is in appear- 

 ance a very different moth from either of the foregoing species. 



CLOTHES-MOTHS 



" The moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like 

 wool." Isaiah. li, 8. 



From the accounts which have been given in the preceding 

 pages of the three species of Clothes-moths, the ravages of which 

 are commonly encountered in the household, it has been learned 

 that they may each be discriminated from the other by the habits 

 of the larvae. The Carpet-moth makes a gallery of the substance 



454 



