UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
BULLETIN No. 783 
Contribution from the Bureau of Entomology 
L. O. HOWARD, Chief 
J>\& m ^J-U 
Washington, D. C. 
PROFESSIONAL PAPER 
July 14, 1919 
THE RICE MOTH. 
By F. H. Chittenden, 
Entomologist In Charge of Truck-Crop Insect Investigations. 
CONTENTS. 
Page. 
Introduction 1 
Nature of injury 1 
Descriptive 2 
The moth 2 
The egg 3 
The larva 3 
The pupa 4 
Distribution 4 
Page. 
Food habits 4 
Reported injuries 5 
Life history :_ 7 
Associated insects 8 
History and literature 9 
Control measures :__ 10 
Summary 13 
Literature cited 14 
INTRODUCTION. 
Among the insect enemies of stored products which have been ob- 
served recently in this country, a small whitish larva or caterpillar 
of the moth Corcyra cephalonica Stainton (PL I) has attracted atten- 
tion by its injuries. It resembles somewhat the better-known fig 
moth (Ephestia cautella Walk.). It has not been noted as a pest of 
importance, and has been given no common or English name. As it 
is somewhat widely reported as destructive to stored rice it may 
be called the rice moth. Beginning with October, 1911, complaints 
of damage by this insect were received from a firm manufactur- 
ing chocolate in western Pennsylvania, and a year later from an- 
other manufacturing firm in the same State, but the species was not 
positively identified until 1916. 
NATURE OF INJURY. 
The first correspondent of the Bureau of Entomology who wrote 
of this insect stated that beans of cacao (Theobroma cacao) imported 
from the Tropics were subject to attack by the larva. Apparently it 
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