6 BULLETIN 737, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
in stored products, and that it infests groceries, drugs, and dried 
products indiscriminately, but possibly favors manufactured tobacco. 
He also reports having found the insect very injurious to wall paper 
and books in Honolulu. 
Dried animal substances occasionally are attacked. Dried fish is 
mentioned as a food substance by Mackie (74), and Van Dime (55) 
reports the beetle as having been reared from fish guano used as 
fertilizer. There are also reports of leather goods having been in- 
jured. The late F. C. Pratt (53) noted injury by this species to an 
insect collection in western Texas, about 10 per cent of the specimens 
in a box of Orthoptera having been damaged. 
There are numerous records of the tobacco beetle feeding upon and 
injuring upholstered furniture. Cook (25) has described injury to 
Fic. 5.—Work of the tobacco beetle (Lasioderma serricorne) in pressed yeast 
cake. 
furniture, and stated that the work of the insect “made the plush 
covering look like a sieve.” Chittenden (53, 58) has reported the 
insect as damaging upholstered’ furniture, rugs, and tapestry in 
dwelling houses in the District of Columbia, West Virginia, and - 
New Jersey. Osborn (46, 49) has reported infestation of plush up- 
holstered furniture at Columbus, Ohio. Silk as food is mentioned by 
Osborn (46). Injury to silk and plush hangings in France has been 
mentioned by Bordage (38). 
The occurrence of the beetle in some of the substances given is 
undoubtedly more or less accidental. Attempts made by the writer 
to rear the beetle from the egg stage in many of these substances 
resulted in failure. In many instances the larve fed for a time but 
did not complete their transformation to the adult stage. In con- 
trols on these experiments adults were reared from eggs placed in 
veast cakes, tobacco seed, or cured tobacco, at the same time and kept 
under the same conditions. 
