HOUSEHOLD AND CAMP INSECTS 



49 



abundant may perhaps be best detected as a yellowish, mealy powder 

 dropping from the infested straw or grain, as the case may be. 

 This mite is primarily beneficial in that it preys upon two important 

 grain pests and only occasionally troubles man. It produces, like 

 the chigger, a dermatitis which may be diagnosed as rash and 

 attributed to a number of causes other than the true one. Trouble 

 of this kind is particularly likely to follow sleeping upon mattresses 

 stuffed with infested straw or the handhng of infested grain, and 

 there are records of trouble of this kind following the unloading of 

 Egyptian cottonseed. It is also troublesome at times in European 

 countries. 



Since this mite is most commonly associated with the joint worm 

 and the latter winters in the stubble, raking over and burning the 

 stubble in the spring is one of the best methods of preventing this 

 mite becoming extremely abundant.^ ^ Cooling lotions may well be 

 applied locally to reduce irritation. 



FABRIC PESTS 



Clothes Moths 



The small, white caterpillars of these insects, frequently in a 

 cylindric, webbed case, are very different from the young of the 

 carpet beetles noticed on page 53, one of which is frequently 



Fig. 15 Case-making clothes moth; adult; larva and larva in case; enlarged. (After 

 Riley) 



referred to as the Buffalo clothes moth. The true clothes moths 

 are small, grayish yellow moths or millers, indistinctly dark 

 spotted and having a wing spread of less than half an inch. The 

 progeny of not all small moths are injurious to fabrics, though 

 several such destructive species occur in this State. 



51 Webster. U. S. Dep't Agr., Bur. Ent. Circ. 118. 1910. 



