346 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



It has been known in this country since 1728, and was probably intro- 

 duced by the early settlers of Virginia and the Carolinas. No insect is 

 more easily carried from one country to another, as .it will breed lor 

 years without intermission in a bottle of grain kept as a sample, or will 

 remain unsuspected in kernels in parcels of seed. 



Its popular name— -"Angoninois Moth " — is derived from the fact that 

 it has long been very destructive in the province of Angoumois, France, 

 where it is said by Dr. Herpin to have made its first appearance about 

 1750. Duhainel, in 1762, seems first to have made use of the term 

 "l'insecte de 1' Angoumois," and the title of his paper is " Histoire d'un 

 Insecte qui dCvore les Grains de PAngoumois." From that date to the 

 present time this pest has attracted much attention in France. 



Curtis, in I860 (Farm Insects, p. 310), stated that it had not yet ap- 

 peared in England, but it must have appeared there soon afterwards, as 

 in the British Museum Catalogue of Lepidopte.a, Part XXIX (1804), 

 it is entered as from England. It is also found in North Africa, and ap- 

 parently occurs all along both sides of the Mediterranean. 



In a paper byCol.Landon Carter (Transactions American Philosophi- 

 cal Society, 1708), it is stated that the injury to wheat began in North 

 Carolina in 1728, and in the next forty years had extended from North 

 Carolina into Virginia, Maryland, and the lower counties of Delaware. 

 Later, it spread still more extensively, and Harris (Insects Injurious to 

 Vegetation, 2d ed., 1852, p. 503) states : "This fly- weevil, or little grain- 

 moth, has spread from North Carolina and Virginia, where its depreda- 

 tions were first observed, into Kentucky and the southern parts oflOhio 

 and Indiana, and probably more or less throughout the wheat region of 

 the adjacent States between the thirty-sixth and for tieth degrees of north 

 latitude. But these are not the extreme limits of its occasional depre- 

 dations, as it has been found even in New England, where, however, 

 its propagation seems to have been limited by the length and severity of 

 the winter." 



Glover, in the Patent Office Report for 1854, states that he had pre- 

 viously observed the moths in Georgia flying about the corn-fields in 

 November, and literally swarming about an old shed in the middle of 

 the field. They are at the present day to be found all through the 

 South, and that they occur (at least occasionally) as far north as 43° 

 north latitude is shown by the fact that Dr. Fitch found them in the 

 museum at Albany, and that they were recently found in corn sent from 

 Lansing, Mich., to Connecticut, and afterwards forwarded to us. 



NATURAL HISTORY AND METHOD OF WORK. 



The old statement concerning the eggs is : M The female moth lays a 

 cluster of from twenty to thirty eggs upon a single grain, in lines or little 

 obloug masses in the longitudinal channel." Our own observations and 

 experiments on the moth in confinement show that the eggs are prefer- 

 ably laid (in ears of corn) under the thin membrane which adheres to 

 the basal portion of the seed, and although the membrane adheres very 

 closely the moth manages to insert her ovipositor under it. They are 

 also deposited in both the longitudinal and transverse grooves between 

 the grains. Sometimes there is only a single egg, though usually they 

 occur in batches of as many as twenty -five. The eggs are delicate, flat, 

 aud oval, and are pale red in color, with prismatic reflections (Plate VI, 

 Fig. 2, e). 



The young larvae are very active and crawl rapidly about, suspend- 

 ing themselves by silken threads. They soon find tender places and 



