61 
monly, and cow-peas are sometimes infested by it. While the 
caterpillar is still young, infested kernels can not he distinguished 
except, perhaps, by their light weight. Later, however, a visible 
hole is made in the grain after the caterpillar is full-grown. 
The larvae of this species are infested by at least one parasite, 
and also by a minute, predaceous mite (Pcdiculoides ventricosus 
Newp.). This latter sometimes breeds in infested grain to an 
extent to become enormously abundant. By its infinitesimal bites 
it irritates the human skin, causing a rashlike and sometimes rather 
severe eruption, very annoying to harvest hands, grain-house em¬ 
ployees, and others having to do with the handling of grain. 
This grain moth may be most readily destroyed by fumigation 
with carbon bisulfid as described on another page. 
The Mediterranean Flour-moth 
(Ephestia kuelmiclla ZellJ 
When wheat flour in mills is webbed together in more or less 
irregular, matted masses (Fig. 3), very likely to cause trouble by 
clogging the mill machinery, the presence of the Mediterranean 
flour-moth is' to be inferred. The adult of this insect is a small 
moth or miller, harmless in that stage, however, and injurious only 
as a larva. Its caterpillars make tubes of silk in which they live, 
covering them with flour upon which they feed. When full-grown 
they discard this tube and wander about in search of suitable places 
in which to pupate, spinning silk as they crawl, thus webbing the 
flour together. Preparatory to pupation a cocoon is also spun of 
silk matted with flour, which adds to the nuisance created by their 
presence. 
DESCRIPTION 
The egg of this insect is a little more than a sixtieth of an inch 
in length, elongate-oval, white and almost smooth when freshly 
deposited, but later becoming roughened and darker. 
The caterpillar (Fig. 4, a, d, e) is about a half to three fifths 
of an inch long, when full-grown, and varies from whitish to pink¬ 
ish in general color. The surface is sprinkled with short whitish 
hairs rising from minute but prominent tubercles. 
The pupa (Fig. 4, b) is cylindrical, tapering posteriorly, with 
a cluster of small hooklets at the tip of the abdomen. It is reddish 
brown above, the head and thorax the darkest, and much lighter 
below, approaching a yellowish tint on the wing-pads and abdomen. 
The tip of the last segment is considerably darker than the rest 
of the body. The cocoon (Fig. 5) varies in length from two fifths 
of an inch to half an inch, and is about a fourth of an inch in 
width. It is composed of delicate silk, often intermingled with 
