27 
itself, to a limited extent, when the manufactured products 
are not available. While a resident of California, being sus¬ 
picious of all breakfast foods purchased for my table, I 
closely inspected every package, and found flour-moth larvae 
in oatmeal, corn meal, rolled wheat, and germea bought at 
a local grocery store. They also feed on crackers, and have 
been found in bumblebees’ nests and in beehives, feeding 
probably upon the wax and bee-bread. Mills in which several 
kin Is of cereals are prepared for food are not troubled equally in 
all departments. For instance, where wheat flour, oatmeal, and 
buckwheat flour are manufactured, the oatmeal is more infest* d 
than the wheat flour, and the buckwheat worse than the oatmeal. 
The manager of a California mill wrote me with reference to this 
subject as follows: “I have observed that they seem to thrive best 
in buckwheat flour. I have never been able to understand why 
they should prefer this flour, but we have to be exceedingly care¬ 
ful of this food, or in a short time it will become full of webs 
spun by the larvse.” The manager of a Canadian mill wrote Mr. 
Fletcher the following: “If this insect strikes a mill where a 
variety of cereal products are manufactured, it will work its way 
into every product, though it likes glutinous substances best. It 
attacked every thing we made, from pot-barley to fine farina and 
milk food in tins” In a mill, where rice foods are the principal 
product manufactured, the manager tells me the rice is more at¬ 
tacked than any other cereal. He said they were much troubled' 
with the larvse in food put up in tin cans lined with tissue paper,, 
very often having the goods returned, marked “wormy.” 
DEVELOPMENT. 
By a long series of experiments, conducted in California and 
Illinois, I have ascertained that the life cycle of Ephestia kuehni- 
ella under the most favorable conditioi s, from the time the egg 
is deposited until the adult moth emerges, is about nine weeks. 
Mr. Danysz has found that the period of development in France 
is about the same, insects in his experiments having completed 
the life cycle in from two to two and a half months. Professor 
Landois is of the opinion that during warm weather, in Germany, 
the larva of the flour moth develops into the adult within four 
weeks. In speaking of the outbreak in warehouses in London, 
Mr. Klein says: “The larvae, which were full-fed in about three 
weeks, then made their way to the surface.” It is hardly safe to 
assume that this represents the full life cycle of the larvae, as the 
exact date of hatching was not recorded. 
In connection with the Canadian outbreak, Mr. Fletcher says: 
“There are probably two normal broods of the flour moth, one 
emerging in the spring, and another in the autumn; but in a jar 
kept constantly under observation in my office, which was heated 
during the winter, there have been, I judge, three distinct broods; 
although from the fact that some retarded individuals have been 
emerging the whole time, and no special study made of them, it 
is very difficult to keep track of the separate broods.” 
