U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



ous parts of the world. As early as 1737 Reaumur (16, pp. £75-277) 

 recorded a' moth attacking chocolate, and it is likely that he was re- 

 ferring to E. elutella. In 1897 Chittenden (5, p. 9) stated that the 

 food habits of the moth had been known in Europe since early in the 

 eighteenth century. 



A review of entomological literature made by the present writers 

 and others shows that Ephestia elutella is world-wide in distribution. 

 The most complete bibliography on the genus Ephestia was that pub- 

 lished by Richards and Thomson (20, pp. $31^6) in '1932. It is 

 worth while, however, to record here that, outside of references to in- 

 festation of tobacco and cacao, nothing positive is given regarding the 

 extent of injury by the insect. This leads to the assumption that there- 

 are factors in the biology of the pest that retard multiplication or re- 

 duce the population in stored products. It is sometimes found in 

 infestations associated with the Indian-meal moth (Plodia inter punc- 

 tella Hbn.), the fig moth (Ephestia cautella Walk.), the raisin moth 

 (E. figulilella Greg.), and the Mediterranean flour moth (E. kueh- 

 niella Zell.), but it apparently fails to build up as large populations 

 as the other species mentioned. Maskew (9), in 1912, published an 

 account of an infestation by E. elutella in a shipment of walnuts re- 

 ceived at San Francisco, Calif., from Manchuria, and stated that the 

 infestation was serious. De Ong (6) reported that peanuts received 

 at San Francisco from China in the fall of 1924 were heavily infested 

 by E. elutella. He referred to the insect by the common name of cur- 

 rant moth. Gibson and Twinn (7, p. 29) merely reported the presence 

 of the insect in Canada and gave no information concerning the extent 

 of the injury. The foregoing references represent the published ac- 

 counts of the occurrence of the moth in North America prior to 1930. 

 It is reasonable to assume that if the moth had been a serious pest of 

 a variety of stored products, more information concerning its ravages 

 would be found in the literature. 



Because in recent years the tobacco moth has developed into a major 

 pest of cigarette-type tobaccos, it is considered important to mention 

 any literature references concerning infestation of tobacco. Mokrzecki 

 and Bragina (11) in 1913-14 discovered larvae of Ephestia elutella 

 infesting cured tobacco in the Crimea. Tchorbadjief, in 1928 (#i), 

 reported the moth as a pest of stored tobacco in Bulgaria. On 

 September 9, 1930, there appeared an article 3 which stated that 

 larvae of E. elutella had appeared in stocks of Rhodesian tobacco 

 held in bond in a London warehouse. It was feared that this in- 

 festation would cause the tobaccos to depreciate in value. Back and 

 Reed (2), in December 1930, reported the discovery of this moth in- 

 festing flue-cured, cigarette-type tobaccos in a few warehouses in 

 Richmond, Va. As stated previously, this was the first published 

 record of its appearance as a pest of tobacco in the United States. 

 Mokrzecki (10), who in 1930 published his observations from 1909 to 

 1930 on the biology and control of E. elutella in the tobacco-storage 

 warehouses of Poland, reported that the pest had been observed infest- 

 ing cured tobacco in Simferopol and Yalta, Crimea; Sukhum, Cau- 

 casus; Philippopol, Bulgaria; and Poland. He observed also that 

 larvae of the moth were imported into Poland in tobacco purchased 



3 Hill, B. D. the tobacco situation in south Africa and southern rhodesia. 

 U. S. Dept. Com., Bur. Foreign and Dom. Com. Circ. 270: 5-7. 1930. [Mimeographed.] 



