ENEMIES OF GKAIN-MOTHS. 
509 
field, the husks or shucks protecting it from the moths, 
which find only a few ears, whose ends protrude beyond 
the husks, whereon to deposit their eggs. Hence some per¬ 
sons recommend keeping corn in the husks, to preserve it 
from the corn-moth and also from the corn-weevil. This 
method is objectionable on account of the trouble it occa¬ 
sions, and the increased bulk of the corn; and it is less 
sure than the means above described. 
Mr, Owen has made the interestino; discoverv, that the 
larvm of the wheat-moth are sometimes preyed upon by 
still smaller larvae, which, having destroyed their victims, 
are transformed to minute black ichnemnon-flies. These 
have not yet been obtained from any of the samples of 
infected Avheat or corn that have come under my notice ; 
but, from the figures given of them by ]Mr. Owen in “ The 
Cultivator,” for November, 1846, they appear evidently to 
be Chalcidian parasites, and belong perhaps to the genus 
PteromaluSo Of these parasitical flies he remarks, that 
“ some farmers had noticed larn:e numbers amono; the tail- 
ings of the winnowing machine.” Where they prevail, they 
doubtless contribute, in no small measure, to check the in¬ 
crease of the moths. 
The Ano;oumois moth is unknown in Encrland. Hence 
specimens of the American insect, sent by me to my friend, 
the late Mr. Edward Doubleday, of the British Museum, 
in December, 1845, were not immediately recognized by 
him and by ^Ir. Curtis, the celebrated Eno-lish entomolomst. 
Afterwards, on consulting the work of Duponchel on the 
Lepidoptera of France, they identified my specimens as be¬ 
longing to the Butalis ce)'ealella, the true Angoumois grain- 
moth, described and figured in that work. This identifi- 
cation is the more interesting and satisfactory, from the 
circumstance that I had not communicated to these gentle¬ 
men my belief that the insects were the same, and had 
given to them no account of the habits of my specimens, 
being desirous of obtaining their opinion unbiased by my 
