THE MEDITERRANEAN NATURALIST 
272 
III. The last insect was the chocolate moth 
(Epliestia elutella) a small (lark grey moth the 
females of which when present fly about in 
swarms at night and lay their eggs on the biscuit. 
The larvae are about £ inch long, narrow and pink 
in colour. They are soon hatched and by means 
of their strong jaws and active legs scrape and’bore 
their way through crevices to the centre of the 
biscuit. Here, when full grown, they undergo , 
the pupal state and spoil the biscuits comple- 
tely by their excreta and the way in which they 
bind the biscuits together with webs. A single 
square biscuit may contain some six or eight pupae. ; 
The moth first appears in June and breeds fast 1 
until September, when the remaining pupae hiber- 
nate until the following year. They are common 
in the cocoa stores of Cork and Gibraltar where 
they are a frightful scourge, but I have seen none 
about the stores in Malta. 
The tins containing them were at once placed 
in the furnace and destroyed, a few specimens ; 
being kept under observation in the incubator. 
But few tins were so affected and these showed 
no means by which the moth could have gained 
entrance. From the fact that the biscuits were 
matted together with web and contained dead 
moths and live hibernating pupae in great numbers 
it was evident in December 1890 and J anuary 1892 
that previous broods had existed in these tins and 
and it was probable that the tins were infected 
before leaving England. 
Professor Huxley who reported to a special com- 
mission on this subject gives thefollowing advice: — 
(!) To have no cocoa stored in any place in 
which, biscuits are manufactured. 
- (2) To head up all biscuit puncheons as soon 
as they are full of the freshly baked biscuit. 
(3) Coat puncheons with tar as soon as they 
are headed up, or at least work lime wash well 
into all'-tlie joints and crevices. 
(4) Line the bead-rooms of ships with tin, so 
that if the ephestia has got into a puncheon it may 
not get into the rest of the ship. 
(5) If other means fail, expose woodwork of 
puncheons to a heat of 200 F for two hours. 
Armenia 
By Professor Misasse Tchebaz. 
The historical limits of Armenia are very elas- 
tic. Its sovereigns, when they were not urged on by 
the thirst for conquest, remained generally satis- 
fied with ruling the fifteen provinces of Greater 
Armenia; but some bellicose kings, among whom 
a few even took the ambitious title of King of 
Kings, widened these boundaries in all directions. 
Moses of Khoren, the Heredotus of Armenia, says, 
without circumlocution: “The brave have no other 
limits than their weapons, which acquire as much 
as they cut offPThus, then, in its periods of splen- 
dour, Armenia has generally been bounded by the 
Caucasus mountains, the Black Sea, the Caspian, 
the plains of Mesopotamia, and the banks of the 
Euphrates. From this vast volcanic plateau, the 
height of which varies between 2,700 and 11,000 
feet, rise numerous watercourses, the most celebra- 
ted of which are the Euphrates. Tigris. Djerokh 
(Phasis or Phisou) and the Araxes tGehon) These 
rivers, according to the Bible, came out of the ter- 
restrial Paradise, a statement which gave rise to 
the tradition which places the cradle of the human 
race in Armenia. The mountain system •: the coun- 
try, enriched by the mighty offshoots from the 
Caucasus and Taurus, gives it an imposing aspect, 
and the Koords owe their wild customs to the 
inaccessible height of the Gortoak chain, where 
their tents have been pitched from the remotest 
antiquity. What, however, constitutes the glory 
of this island of mountains, as Bitter called Ar- 
menia, is the majestic Ararat, which rises to a 
height of 17,212 feet, 1,431 leet higher than the 
most elevated mountain in Europe, Mont Blanc, 
and is, according to Olearius, used by the sailors 
of the Caspian Sea as a sort of polar star. Profes- 
sor’-T antes Bryce, who ascended Mount Ararat in 
1876, gives, in his “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” a 
fine description of this classic mountain, where 
Eastern tradition and the Bible make X calls ark 
rest. I visited Russian Armenia in 1S8S, and the 
monks of the celebrated monastery of Etchmiadzin, 
near Mount Ararat, showed me a fragment of the 
ark. I am not prepared to guarantee its ge- 
nuineness. All I can say is that this piece of 
wreck appeared to be of very old and very solid 
wood, more solid, perhaps, than the legend con- 
