430 LEPIDOPTERA CHAP. 



Tinea belongs is remarkable for the diversity and exceptional 

 character of the food -habits of the larvae ; species subsist 

 on dried camel's dung, various kinds of clothes, furs, and 

 hair, and even about horns of deer and horses' hoofs : one 

 species has been found in abundance in the hair of a live 

 sloth, Brady -pus cuculliger, under circumstances that render it 

 possible that the larva feeds on the creature's hair, though it 

 may feed on minute vegetable matter found in the hair. 

 The larva of Tinea vastella is occasionally found feeding on the 

 horns of living antelopes. Several species of Tineidae are known 

 to devour Scale-Insects. 



Lita solanella is notorious for the ravages it commits on 

 stored potatoes. Quite a number of species live on cryptogamic 

 matter, or in old wood; Oinophila v-Jiarum feeds on the mould 

 on the walls of cellars, and is reputed to be injurious by occasion- 

 ally also attacking the corks of bottles containing wine. Oecocecis 

 guyonella is said to be the cause of galls on Limoniastrum 

 guijonianum, a plant that, growing in the deserts to the south 

 of Algeria, is a favourite food of camels, and is frequently entirely 

 covered with sand. The deposition of an egg by this moth is 

 believed by Guenee ^ to give rise to a gall in which the larva is 

 entirely enclosed (like the larvae of the gall-flies). Of Clothes- 

 moths there are at least three species widely distributed. 

 TricTiopliaga tapetzdla is perhaps entitled to be considered the 

 Clothes-moth ; its caterpillar not only feeds on clothes, but spins 

 webs and galleries amongst them. Tinea pellionella is also very 

 common ; its larva lives in a portable case, while that of the 

 third species, Tineola hiselliella, forms neither a case nor definite 

 galleries. "We have found this the most destructive of the three 

 at Cambridge. Clothes or valuable furs may be completely pro- 

 tected by wrapping them in good sound paper in such a way 

 that no crevices are left at the places where the edges of the 

 paper meet. Giarments that have become infested may be entirely 

 cleared by free exposure to air and sunshine. 



Two species of Tinea have been recorded as viviparous, viz. 

 Tinea vivipara in Australia, and an undetermined species in 

 South America. The species of the genus Solenobia — in which 

 the female is apterous — are frequently parthenogenetic. The 

 group Taleporiidae, to which this genus belongs, is by some 



■^ Ann. Soc. ent. France (4), x. 1870, p. 1, pi. vii. 



