The Clothes Moth 
99 
and creeping upwards, often to the ceiling, 
suspends itself from some projection in an 
angle of the wall, and the larva becomes a 
chrysalis. In this form it will remain 
dormant for some twenty-one days, at 
the end of which period the small silver- 
grey moth issues forth. While this moth 
is generally called, by common consent, 
“ the Clothes Moth,” it must not be 
thought for one moment that woollen goods 
alone are attacked. Furs, hair, feathers 
and many other materials are destroyed by 
them. The Ashmolean Museum at Oxford 
lost the finest specimen of the Dodo 
which existed, through the destructive 
powers of these little insects. There is 
one great point, however, that must be 
told in favour of the Clothes Moth, for she 
sadly needs all the extenuating circum- 
stances which we can bring forward. She 
selects material in which to deposit her 
eggs which has been cast aside or stored, 
not that which is regularly being used or 
worn. She is, too, a most useful agent in 
Nature for clearing away old, unsightly 
rubbish, such as sheep’s wool, which, in 
some districts, is seen so often attaching 
