MEAL AND TABBY MOTHS 109 



attached to the cereals, the produce of which it will eat 

 in any condition, whether as corn, flour, meal, bran, or 

 even straw. It has also been known to feed on clover. 

 The moth appears during the summer months, and its 

 presence in houses is most to be expected when the flour- 

 box is kept constantly well stored, or better, when a sack 

 of flour is kept. Hence such institutions as workhouses, 

 hospitals, asylums, &c., where large stores of farinaceous 

 substances are necessarily kept, may be expected to pro- 

 duce it more abundantly than ordinary houses. For this 

 reason also it occurs in flour-mills, barns, granaries, and 

 stables, and in bakers' shops, and, indeed, it may be ex- 

 pected to turn up wherever its food is housed in quantity. 



For example, a certain French entomologist found his 

 house infested with the insect, and for a long time could 

 not discover whence they came. At last he traced them 

 to a large box of bran on his neighbour's premises. 

 Here they had bred in hundreds, and then had entered 

 his house by the open window. It has even been met 

 with in a coal-mine in Yorkshire more than a quarter of 

 a mile underground. An entomologist, on visiting the 

 colliery, saw some of the moths flying about in the 

 workings, and quantities of the remains of others on the 

 cobwebs with which the place abounded, so that the 

 species was evidently well established there. It had, 

 no doubt, been introduced with the oats for the horses 

 employed below ground. 



The caterpillar of this moth is not nearly so easy to 

 find as the perfect insect. The latter delights to perch 

 on walls, and may sometimes be seen in scores, boldly 

 sitting in perfectly exposed situations on the walls of 

 a flour-mill. But the caterpillar loves retirement, and 

 this alone, apart from its unattractive appearance, 

 will account for the fact that its habits remained very 



