5360 The New Carpet Beetle—Anthrenus Scrophularie. [August, 
imagined, separating it from the level of the Mancos river flowing 
at the foot of the precipice. 
The remains of an old tower are to be seen in the valley below, 
the walls of which are several feet in height, having the plaster 
crumbled almost entirely away from the interstices between the 
stones. The mounds of decay which lie within and without, 
show conclusively that the building at one time was many times 
as high as it now appears. In the vicinity quantities of highly 
glazed and ornamented pottery lies scattered around, but all of it 
in a fragmentary condition. 
Through the neighboring cafions occur thousands of these 
interesting mural remains, but space forbids the mention of more 
than a few of the most characteristic. 
:0: 
THE NEW CARPET BEETLE—ANTHRENUS 
SCROPHULARI#! 
BY J. A. LINTNER. 
URING the summer of 1874, notices appeared in various 
newspapers of the ravages of a carpet-beetle, quite different in 
its appearance and in the character of its depredations from the 
well-known carpet-moth, Tinea tapetzella, which for so long a 
time had been the only known insect depredator on our carpets. 
Its habitat was stated to be beneath the borders of carpets 
where nailed to the floor, eating in those portions numerous holes 
of aninch or morein diameter. Occasionally it made its way ant? 
the crevices left by the joinings of the floor, following which, 
entire breadths of carpet would be cut across as by scissors. In 
several instances carpets had been destroyed—new ones as 
readily as older—and it was questioned whether their use could 
be continued, in view of a prospective increase of the alarming 
ravages, 
The insect was new to every one, and no one could form 4 
rational conjecture as to what order of the Insecta it belonged. 
‘It was described as a small ovate object, about one eighth of an 
inch in length, thickly clothed with numerous short bristle-like 
__ hairs, and terminating in a pencil of these, forming a tail. It was 
- exceedingly active in its motions, and when disturbed in its con- 
- 1 From advance sheets of the Thirteenth Annual Report on the New York State a 
Museum of Natural History. sa n 
