34 STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 



" some vessels were despatched to Macri Bay 

 for bullocks, and others to Smyrna and Aleppo 

 for bread, which was furnished us by the Turks 

 a kind of hard dry husk. We were glad to get 

 this, as we were then put on full rations, and 

 our biscuits were bad and full of worms ; many 

 of our men could only eat them in the dark." 



The biscuits become infected during the cooling 

 which takes place between the baking and the 

 packing. The adult insect, E. kuhniella, is a 

 perfect nuisance in flour-mills. So persistent 

 and so numerous are these moths at times that 

 they clog the rollers with their cocoons, and 

 sometimes completely stop them. The webbing of 

 the elevators in the mills often becomes covered 

 with them and with their silky skeins, and then 

 the elevators stop working. They mat together 

 the flour and meal with their silken excreta, and 

 so uniform is the temperature of the Mill, and 

 so favourable to the life of the insect, that they 

 complete their life-cycle in this country in two 

 months, and in the warmer parts of America even 

 more rapidly. In well-heated Mills the pro- 

 ceeding is continuous, so that six generations 

 at least may be produced each year. 



Now that the war is spreading in the Near 



