RELATION TO THE HOUSEHOLD 



237 



in the artificial warmth of our houses the beetles emerge 

 in late fall or during the winter, and lay their eggs on 

 the dried peas, etc., so that what may be a pretty fair 

 lot of legumes in fall, may be an utterly useless lot of 

 vegetable debris, in the spring following. The grubs 

 in this case are chunky, white creatures, curled up 

 inside the seeds, and the beetles are small, very chunky 

 gray forms, with very stout hind legs and the hind part 

 of the abdomen very abruptly terminated. The ordi- 



FIG. 112. The drug beetle, Sitodrepa panicce: a, larva; b, pupa; c, d, adult. 



nary householder sees little of them because, as a rule, 

 only a small stock of such products for almost imme- 

 diate use is at hand; but to the farmer, the seedsman, 

 the grocer or other dealer, the matter is sometimes 

 serious. Fortunately we can reach the insects even 

 inside the seeds by the fumes of bisulphide of carbon, 

 in a manner to be pointed out a little later. 



Then come those species that get into more solid 

 vegetable fibre, like roots, stems or even wood, and 

 many of these belong to the little family Ptinidcz which 

 contains a mixture of odd and bizarre forms, very 

 different and yet very similar in general character and 



