TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS. 369 



disturbed, and how it was that they continued so active 

 even during the cool winter months ; for of course we laid 

 all such transgressions at the door of the poor moths, al- 

 though we very seldom found any of the silky-web traces 

 of their presence. 



But by and by we began to notice that there were always 

 roaches, young or old, close at hand, when we moved the 

 clothing, and then we remembered that once upon a time, 

 in Central America, we had been put to loss and annoy- 

 ance in the same way, and that these same big black 

 roaches abounded there even more than here. 



Then we watched more closely, and finally detected a 

 roach in the act of eating a hole in a mohair skirt. 



One of the things that first led us to suspect the roaches 

 were the real culprits was the fact that the holes were al- 

 ways made where something had' been sjDilled on the gar- 

 ment, and were large or small according to the spot ; and 

 we knew that moths ai'e perfectly indifferent to such deli- 

 cacies as soiled garments; new ones taste just as good to 

 them, and they prefer wool, while roaches like the taste of 

 " old clothes" and are indifferent as to whether their delec- 

 table dish be served up on silk, wool, or cotton. 



That had been another of our puzzles, why moths, for 

 the first time in our experience, should eat cotton and silk ; 

 we had found no more trouble in keeping them at a dis- 

 tance from winter clothing, regularly put up for the sum- 

 mer, than we had in our Northern home. Little bits of 

 raw cotton soaked in turpentine and placed here and there 

 inside the packages and chests containing the clothing, 

 served their purpose as eflfectually in the one place as in 

 the other. Turpentine is the best safeguard against moths 

 that Ave have ever known, the only one, in our experience, 

 that has proved a perfect protection. 



We were a long while, as we have said, in unearthing 



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