Reports to various Correspondents. 
99 
distributed over England and Scotland and to some extent Ireland. 
It is found in North America and Canada, in Chili, Australia and all 
over Europe. The larvae block up the machinery by their habit of 
matting the flour or meal together with silk and forming when 
mature cylindrical silken cocoons in which they pupate. The larvm 
prefer flour and meal and bran, but will attack grain and most cereals. 
It takes two months to complete its life-cycle in this country, but in 
America it seems to develop more rapidly, thirty-eight days being 
sufficient. Breeding keeps on all the year in mills — in well-heated 
mills as many as six generations may occur. 
The only plan which is quite successful is fumigation of the 
whole mill with bisulphide of carbon. It is best to get a chemist to 
undertake this, as the substance is poisonous and inflammable, and to 
make a notification to the insurance company. Turning steam from 
the engines over the walls, machinery, etc., has been found to be 
beneficial, followed by whitewashing the walls and well scrubbing 
down the floors, all damaged stuff being burnt previously. The 
steam can of course easily be applied by means of a long hose. 
Flour, of course, must be moved and the machinery examined, latter 
to prevent rusting. Sulphur is not much good to use for fumigating 
and spoils all flour. 
Cleanliness is said to prevent it ; so it does, but constant fresh 
importations occur— coming in in sacks and bags used in the trans- 
poit of the flour. Sacks and bags should be cleansed in some easy 
way, such as steeping in boiling water every time the pinkish white 
larvae are noticed. It is almost necessary to shut down the mill for 
a few days and have everything cleaned out and burnt and then 
either apply the fumigation or steam. It is a troublesome and costly 
pest to cope with and half-hearted remedies are waste of time. 
Diseases of Wine Corks. 
Little or nothing is known of the insect or other animal enemies 
of corks, and as will be seen by Mr. Massee’s letter (p. 106), nothing 
i e a aiding the fungi which also attack them. An enquiry was sent to 
the Museum concerning this subject from Dr. G. Newton Pitt, Renter 
Warden of the Armourers’ Company, as follows : — 
“I have been attempting, somewhat unsuccessfully, to learn 
something about the disease of corks in bottles which leads to the 
ullaging of wine. I presume the disease is due to the inroads 
ot the maggot of some beetle. I should be glad to learn (1) 
what is the name of the creature, and also whether the corks are 
H 2 
