EPHESTrA S KM I RUE A. 209 



are stored with refuse materials of many kinds, and 

 are, therefore, as likely as not to be the home of the 

 insect. Examining them in various ways, and more 

 especially watching them in still summer evenings, 

 when the Ephestix are in the habit of flying, may 

 lead to our turning up the insect in greater numbers, 

 and learning something more about it. (John H. 

 Wood, February, 1888; E.M.M., April, 1888, XXIV, 

 250—252.) 



Ephestia passulella. 

 Plate CLVI, fig. 6. 



On the 4th of September, 1881, Mr. Sydney Webb 

 very kindly sent me a batch of eggs of this small 

 species, laid loosely by the parent moth, which he had 

 captured in the Oil- Cake Company's warehouse a short 

 time before. 



The eggs began to hatch on the 8th of September, 

 and continued to do so at intervals for two or three 

 days, and the little larvae were confined with some 

 pieces of the pod of the 6i locust-bean " of commerce, 

 which Mr. Webb had also kindly provided for them, 

 and in the course of a week they could be seen to have 

 grown, and by the end of the month very much more 

 grown, and by the middle of December some of them 

 were as long as 6 mm. 



During the winter months I saw but little of them, 

 when from time to time I found it needful to replenish 

 their food, in consequence of the large accumulation of 

 frass at the bottom of their residence (resembling 

 coffee-grounds), they having denuded the beans by 

 devouring the substance of the pod ; and, moreover, 

 they had already made, and continued to make, any 

 observations on my part very difficult, and of their 

 moulting impracticable, by completely obscuring their 

 surroundings with a dense spinning of whitish-grey 

 silk; and they had lined with silk the little tunnels 

 excavated amongst the refuse. 



VOL. ix. 14 



