68 
New Orleans, La., 6, 20, ’07. 
Mr. E. R. Taylor, Penn Yan, N. Y. 
Dear Sir: Replying to your favor of the 17th inst. beg to 
advise that we used some of your chemicals last year and found 
them to be everything that you claim for them. 
Yours truly, 
NEW ORLEANS MILLING CO. 
GRAIN DESTROYERS. 
Weevils are making themselves so obnoxious in this country 
that experts of the Department of Agriculture are now engaged 
in making a special study of them. Every year they destroy 
many millions of dollars’ worth of stored cereals in granaries 
and elevators. In fact, the question how to fight them is one 
of serious and growing economic importance. Strange to say, 
very little scientific attention has been directed to these insects 
up to date, and not much is known about them. It is reckoned 
that they cause an annual loss of over $1,000,000 in Texas alone, 
and in 1893 the corn crop of Alabama was damaged by them to 
the extent of $1,670,000. 
There are about forty species of these insects, some of which 
are beetles and other moths. Nearly all of them are assisted 
emigrants, having been imported from abroad in cargoes of 
grain. In this manner they have been distributed by commerce 
to all parts of the world. Their native homes are in the tropics. 
Having become domesticated after a fashion by men, they 
depend in colder countries entirely upon him for subsistence, the 
beetles passing the whole of their lives and propagating their 
kind, generation after generation, in his grain bins. 
The damage they do is well-nigh incalculable. Three species 
actually live in the kernels, while the others feed on starchy 
contents. Grain infested by them is unfit for human consump- 
tion, and has been known to cause serious illness. It is 
poisonous to horses and is not wholesome even for swine. 
Poultry, however, find it palatable and nutritious. The moths, 
especially,, are so prolific that the progeny of a single pair in 
a twelvemonth will number many thousands, capable of destroy- 
ing several tons of grain. Fortunately, the increase of these 
pests is checked to some extent by natural enemies, among 
which are spiders that inhabit mills and granaries. In the fields 
they are preyed upon by birdsT and bats. 
One of the worst of these insects is the familiar “granary 
weevil,” which is mentioned in the Georgies of Virgil. Its 
ravages made it known long before the Christian era. It is 
native- to the region of the Mediterranean. Having been domes- 
ticated for so long a time, it has lost use of its wings. The 
female punctures the kernel with her snout and inserts an egg, 
from which is hatched a little worm that lives in the hull and 
feeds on the starchy interior. This species devotes special 
attention to wheat, corn and barley, and it is also very partial 
to the chicken-pea, which is much cultivated as a vegetable in 
the tropics. 
,P uite as bad as tbis beetIe is a moth that comes from the 
Mediterranean region also. The larva, which is known in the 
United States as the “fly weevil,” does moBt injury to corn and 
wheat. In six months grain infested by it loses 40 per cent 
