378 



The Moths and Butterflies 



or they may be uniformly dull-colored; the hind wings are white or grayish. 

 The palpi are long and project conspicuously, so that snout-moth is a name 

 often given to the Crambids. 



Pretty little moths with shining black wings, two-spotted with white on 

 the front ones, and one- or two-spotted on the hind wings, are the Desmias, 

 of which the species maculalis, the grape-vine leaf- folder, is especially common, 

 and often seriously injurious. The larvae fold or roll up grape-leaves and 

 feed concealed inside the roll, skeletonizing the leaf by eating away all of its 

 soft tissues. The larva when full-grown is a little less than an inch long, 

 glossy yellowish green, and very active when disturbed. It pupates within 

 the folded leaf. It is abundant in the South. 



Among the insects that attack stored grain, flour, meal, etc., are several 

 Pyralids. The meal snout-moth, Pyralis farinalis, is a common pest, 

 the larva? making long tubes of silk in the meal, and taking readily to cereals 



FIG. 537. A curious hammock and its maker, Coriscum cuculipennellum, a leaf-rolling 

 moth, whose larva pupates in the odd little hammock shown in the figure. (After 

 photographs by Slingerland; natural size of moth indicated by line; hamrr.cck 

 natural size; a rose-leaf enlarged.) 



of all kinds and conditions, in the kernel or in the form of meal, bran, or 

 straw. The moth expands one inch, the wings being light brown with red- 

 dish reflections and a few wavy transverse lines. The Indian meal-moth, 

 Plodia inter punctella, is another familiar pest in mills and stores, its small 

 whitish larva, with brownish-yellow head, feeding on dry edibles of almost 

 every kind, as meal, flour, bran, grain of all sorts, dried fruits, seeds, and nuts, 

 condiments, roots, and herbs. It spins webs of silk with which it fastens 

 together particles of the attacked food, making it unfit for our use. The moth 

 expands f inch and has the fore wings cream-white at base and reddish 



