496 LEPIDOPTEEA. 



in the floors, in the wainscot, around the walls and shelves 

 of closets, and even in the furniture used for holding clothes, 

 should be brushed over with spirits of turpentine. Powdered 

 black pepper, strewed under the edges of carpets, is said 

 to repel moths. Sheets of paper sprinkled with spirits of 

 turpentine, camphor in coarse powder, leaves of tobacco, 

 or shavings of Russia leather, should be placed among the 

 clothes, when they are laid aside for the summer. 



Furs, plumes, and other small articles, not in constant 

 use, are best preserved by being put, with a few tobacco- 

 leaves, or bits of camphor, into bags made of thick brown 

 l^aper, and closely sewed or pasted up at the end. Chests 

 of camphor-wood, red cedar, or of Spanish cedar, are found 

 to be the best for keeping all articles from moths and other 

 vermin. The cloth linings of carriages can be secured for- 

 ever from the attacks of moths by being washed or sponged 

 on both sides with a solution of the corrosive sublimate of 

 mercury in alcohol, made just strong enough not to leave 

 a white stain on a black feather. Moths can be killed by 

 fumigating the article containing them with tobacco-smoke 

 or with sulphur, or by shutting it m a tight vessel and 

 then plunging the latter into boiling water, or exposing it 

 to steam, for the space of fifteen minutes, or by putting it 

 into an oven heated to about one hundred and fifty degrees 

 of Fahrenheit's thermometer. 



Stored grain is exposed to much injury from the depre- 

 dations of two little moths, in Europe, and is attacked in 

 the same way, and apparently by the same insects, in this 

 country. Not having had sufficient opportunity to examine 

 these insects myself, I have been obliged to rely upon the 

 accounts given by foreign writers for most of the following 

 particulars respecting their history. 



The European grain-moth (^ Tinea graiielld), in its per- 

 fected state, is a winged insect, between three and four 

 tenths of an inch long, from the head to the tip of its wings, 

 and expands six tenths of an inch. It has a whitish tuft 



