142 DORSET CLOTHES-MOTHS AND THEIR HABITS. 



bred from debris of carpets, papers, &c., but I do not believe that 

 it feeds on anything of this sort at Portland, as it occurs out in the 

 open, away from houses, and though I have not yet met with the 

 larva I expect it will be found on the seeds of some plant. 



Tinea (Blaboplianes) rusticella, lib. This species is a very 

 common one, and found almost everywhere, not so much in houses, 

 according to my experience, as in out-houses. It is said to feed on 

 wool, cloth, and probably on various refuse. I suspect from places 

 in which I have found it that it feeds, too, on rotten wood, like 

 many of the genus. The only time that I have met with it under 

 circumstances in which it could be fairly considered a clothes-moth 

 was in an attic in which there were a good many preserved skins 

 of animals. In these the rusticella larvse had evidently been 

 feeding, and there were quantities of the moths sitting on the 

 walls and ceiling, as well as on the skins. But this is not 

 generally a troublesome moth in a house, in fact, except 

 in this particular case, I have hardly seen it indoors. It 

 sometimes also feeds on carpets, as Mr. T. Wilkinson in 

 "Entomologist's Annual," 1857, p. 121, records the fact that he 

 found it in numbers feeding on a piece of half-rotten carpet in a 

 cellar. He also implies that it eats rotten wood as above suggested. 



In Tinea tapetzella, L., we have, in my opinion, the very worst 

 of all our native clothes-moths, and one which entirely upsets the 

 old proverb, for it is, I think, the handsomest of them all. When 

 once known it cannot well be mistaken for anything else, its 

 wings being half black and half white, quite a different style of 

 colouring from any other British clothes-moth. 



It is fortunately not quite so common as some species, but is by 

 no means scarce, and where it effects a footing it does an alarming 

 amount of damage in a short time. 



The larva makes no case, but spins more or less of a silken tube 

 as it proceeds, and perhaps partly owing to its size, its workings 

 seem unusually fcroad and conspicuous. It used to occur only in 

 my harness room when I first came to my present house. I think 

 it has a special partiality for saddles and horse-cloths, perhaps from 



