39 
several weeks, the insects still continued to increase and spread 
to other granaries.” An outbreak of this pest very rarely occurs 
where chickens could be utilized for its destruction, and they are 
therefore of little practical value in this connection. 
Mammals .—I have here to relate a curious instance where a com¬ 
mon house mouse, Mus musculus , devoured several hundred puj ee of 
the flour moth in one evening. April 11, 1895, I removed a male 
and a female flour moth, still pairing, from a stock cage, and placed 
them in a separate cage in order to obtain the eggs for experi¬ 
mental purposes. The eggs were laid and hatched in due season, 
the first young appearing April 21, and the larvae were supplied 
with an abundance of wheat flour and oatmeal for food. The larvae 
matured and were all pupated by June 5, the brown chrysalids 
being plainly seen through the sides of the glass cage. By actual 
count there were two hundred and fifty-four pupae in the cage at 
this time. A mouse discovered this cage sometime during the 
night of June 12, cut through the Swiss muslin that covered it, 
and devoured every, pupa within. Little or none of the flour and 
meal in the cage had been eaten. Of course, millers and dealers 
can turn mice to no good account as enemies of the flour moth, 
and this instance is introduced simply as a record of the evident 
relish of one mouse for insect pupae. 
PredaceousInsects. 
—Those in sec's pop¬ 
ularly known as 
“flour weevils” are 
fort most in this 
group. They are 
known to science as 
Tribolium ferrvginc - 
um* and T. con- 
fusnm. The two spe¬ 
cie s are so closely 
related that they can 
with difficulty be sep¬ 
arated, and, to the 
ordinary observer, 
Fig. 5. — Tribolium confnsum; a, adult beetle; b, larva; c, pupa,— they are One and the 
all enlarged; cl, lateral lobe of abdomen of pupa; e, head of beetle, qarnp fhincr Their 
showing antenna;/, same of T. ferrugineum,—&\\ greatly enlarged. ® . .,. 
(After Chittenden.) habits are simiiiar, 
and the injuries occasioned by them far outnumber those of any 
other insect that attacks grains and farinaceous foods. Both spe¬ 
cies are cosmopolitan, and have a wide geographical distribution. 
* In speaking of the flour moth larvie Professor Zeller says: “Simultaneously with these 
larvae 1 received the little beetle T ribolium ferrugineum , which multiplied so rapidly that during 
the summer I sometimes found large masses of its yellowish larvie. I eagerly destroyed them, fear¬ 
ing they would, at least, be disadvantageous to the larvie and pupie of the flour moth. Now, it 
seems to me that this beetle was unjustly held in suspicion by me, and tbat it and its larvie, at 
most, would help to devour the moths reared for propagation, and dying soon after mating. Froy 1 
this it appears that Prof. Zeller did not observe the weevil feeding upon the larvae or pupie of the 
flour moth. In the same paragraph, however, he says: “I rather suspicion the Epheetia larvie of 
devouring little by little, not only their dead parents, but also the pupae which have fallen out of 
the web.” I have myself seen the flour-moth larvae attack and devour pupie of their own kind in a 
breeding-cage where the pupie had been uncovered. 
