404 
Sitodrepa panicea is now a cosmopolitan species. It is something of a 
museum pest and breeds also in stored farinaceous products, becoming 
also somewhat of a pest in stored drugs of different kinds. It feeds, 
therefore, upon both animal and vegetable substances. 
THE WEEVILS OF THE TERTIARY. 
Mr. Samuel H. Scudder has published in the Proceedings of the Boston 
Society of Natural History (Vol. xxv, pp. 370-386) a preliminary no- 
tice of the tertiary Rhynchophora of North America. tn his work upon 
fossil insects, he has discovered an unexpectedly large number of tertiary 
Rhynchophora, about 880 specimens having passed through his hands. 
More than half of them are from Florissant, Colo. Mr. Scudder has 
monographed the group, and his paper is now printing. The present 
paper is published by permission of the Director of the U. S. Geological 
Survey and contains the generalizations and summaries of the work 
minus the dry descriptive details. 
NEW APPLICATION OF THE TERM *‘ WIRE-WORM.” 
In this country the term “ wire-worm” is almost universally applied 
to the larve of beetles of the family Elateride, on account of their 
lengthened cylindrical shape and hard, chitinous covering. Occasion- 
ally also it is applied to certain of the cylindrical Myriopods of the fam- 
ily Julide. In South Africa and the Australian colonies, however, we 
notice from recent colonial papers that the Liver Fluke (Strongylus 
contortulus) is known to stock-raisers by this same popular name of — 
wire-worm. The matter of popular names is one of considerable impor- 
tance to the economic entomologist, and all new names, however local, 
should be placed on record, with the proper identification, in some ento- 
mological journal. We invite correspondence in this direction. 
FEATHER FELTING. 
There is occasionally sent in to the National Museum or the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture a sample of the felting of bits of feathers into the 
substance of bed ticking or pillow casing which is said to have been 
done by some insect. This felting is frequently very beautifully done, 
and the inside of the cloth next to the feathers appears like a velvet 
tissue. Ordinarily the breaking up of the feathers which results in 
this felting is done by Attagenus piceus, a Dermestid beetle which is 
particularly fond of feathers. We have just received a very fine speci- 
men from Lucy C. Eaton, of Truro, Nova Scotia, in which the work was 
done by Tinea pellionella, one of the commonest of the northern clothes 
moths. It must be remembered in these cases that the felting is not 
done by the insects, but by the mechanical action of the feather barbules 
themselves. When the feathers have once become broken up into 
small bits by the action of the insects, then through the constant press- 
