196 HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



maturity on this rather filmy food. The larvae are also, 

 occasionally, somewhat injurious to specimens in museums 

 and collections, especially to the bodies of insects. F. M. 

 Webster experienced considerable trouble from the larvae 

 of this moth eating into and riddling the bodies of the 

 larger moths in his collection of insects in Ohio. C. V. 

 Riley records rearing the insect from grain infested with 

 the grain moth, Sitotroga cerealella. Evidently the larvae 

 had fed upon the dead caterpillars of the grain moth. 

 Riley and Howard report, in Insect Life, the interesting 

 instance of the larvae having been found in a can of beef 

 meal which had been rejected as being 

 "weevilly." The presence of the larvae 

 of this clothes moth in the beef meal 

 demonstrated its fondness for animal 

 products. 



The life history of this species has 

 FlG- ui-~ Eg ^ f u the not been carefully followed, but we 



webbing clothes j i f 



moth, (x 25.) have had them under observation tor 

 some time. The egg is oval, pearly 

 white, and very small (Fig. 55), yet visible to the eye. 

 The eggs are desposited on the cloth or material on 

 which the larvae will feed. Eggs were easily obtained 

 by putting moths in cages along with black cloth. 

 One moth laid 44 eggs in a period of 9 days. These 

 hatched uniformly in six days and the larvae from these 

 eggs, which hatched July 31st to August 8th, are only 

 partly grown at this writing, March 22d. They have 

 been kept in a cool room. From some overwintering 

 larvae we obtained pupae from May 15th to May 18th. 

 We obtained an adult moth on May 28th from a pupa 

 formed on the 16th, thus giving a pupal stage of about 



