ENEMIES OF GRAIN-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 interesting discovery, that the 
larvae of the wheat-moth are sometimes preyed upon by 
still smaller larvae, which, having destroyed their victims, 
are transformed to minute black ichneurnon-flies. These 
have not yet been obtained from any of the samples of 
infected wheat or corn that have come under my notice ; 
but, from the figures given of them by Mr. Owen in “The 
Cultivator,” for November, 184G, they appear evidently to 
be Chalcidian parasites, and belong perhaps to the genus 
Ptero mains. Of these parasitical flies he remarks, that 
“some farmers had noticed large numbers among 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 Angoumois moth is unknown in England. Hence 
specimens of the American insect, sent by me to my fi lend, 
the late Mr. Edward Doubleday, of the British Museum, 
in December, 1845, were not immediately recognized by 
him and by Mr. Curtis, the celebrated English entomologist. 
Afterwards, on consulting the work of Duponchel on the 
Lepidoptera of France, they identified my specimens as be- 
longing to the Butalis cerealella, 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, 
beino- desirous of obtaining their opinion unbiased by my 
