^i8lM@s ,ra§£§ 
One clay recently, we saw a man with 
but one leg riding the bicycle, and 
shortly after, a little hunchback girl. 
It is an all-around blessing, a boon to 
the weak and crippled, and the strong 
man’s steed. 
* 
Savk the tea left after meals. Pour 
it off into a pitcher, and stand in a cool 
place until you make lemonade. Cold 
tea with a little lemon juice in, is the 
way some like it. But a generous amount 
of the lemon, with sugar and water 
enough to weaken the tea, in fact, tea 
lemonade, is better, according to our 
taste. Try it and adjust the proportions 
to suit your own palates. 
THE CARPET BEETLE. 
ITS LIFE AND HABITS. 
How to Treat and Beat It. 
Wbat is the life history of, and remedy for, the 
Buffalo bug or moth ? mrs. a. J. wai.kek. 
During the past few years, another in¬ 
sect has been added to the list of tor¬ 
ments of the good housewife. It is to be 
found all the year’round, in well-heated 
houses, but more frequently in summer 
and fall, in the form of an active little 
brown creature, one-qtiarter inch or less 
in length, and clothed with stiff, brown 
hairs, as shown at c in Fig. 180. It feeds 
upon carpets and woolen goods, some¬ 
times attacking furs, and usually works 
in a hidden manner from the under sur¬ 
face, either making irregular holes or, 
frequently, following a line of a floor 
crack, and thus cutting long slits in a 
carpet. This destructive creature has 
come to be known as the “ Carpet bug ” 
or “ Buffalo moth”; it is, more prop¬ 
erly, a “ Carpet beetle,” since the adult 
insect is not a moth or a bug (true bugs 
suck their food like plant lice or stink 
bugs). 
The insect was described by Linnaeus 
in 1761, and given the name Serophu- 
lariae. The larva, which is the only stage 
of the insect familiar to most house¬ 
wives, has been known since 1774. It is 
a native of Europe, where it is common, 
but rather as a museum, than a carpet 
pest. The exact date of its introduction 
into the United States is not known; one 
woman thinks that the insect occurred 
in Pennsylvania as early as 1863. In 
1874, public attention was called to the 
pest through newspaper articles com¬ 
plaining of its ravages. There is strong 
evidence to indicate that it was, at one 
time, imported almost simultaneously 
by carpet dealers in New York and Bos¬ 
ton, and thence shipped to inland cities. 
It was thus spread quickly over a large 
territory, and now occurs as a carpet 
pest in all the New England States, and 
west through Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, 
Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas ; 
it also occurs in museums in San Fran¬ 
cisco, having been introduced in insect 
collections imported from Europe. The 
large cities have been centers of distri¬ 
bution for the insect ; we receive many 
complaints from the vicinity of Buffalo 
every year, and one of its common 
names seems to have originated from 
that city. It is not yet common in Phila¬ 
delphia, and is not known as a carpet 
beetle in Washington and southward. 
Its life history, so far as known, pre¬ 
sents some curious and interesting 
phases. The adult insect, shown en¬ 
larged at d, Fig. 181, looks like, and is 
often mistaken for, a Lady-bird beetle. 
Its colors are white, black and scarlet. 
The white and black are indicated in the 
figure, while the red is confined to a 
stripe down the middle of the back, 
widening into projections at three inter¬ 
vals, and meeting the irregular white 
bands. These pretty little beetles are, 
sometimes, to be seen in considerable 
numbers on the windows or walls in 
houses, and are very common in spring 
and during the summer, in many differ¬ 
ent flowers upon whose pollen they feed; 
we have collected hundreds of them 
from the flowers of pear, cherry, cur¬ 
rant, etc., in May and June. Since the 
beetles occur so numerously on these 
flowers, it is probable that most of them 
are not bred in dwelling houses, and 
only a comparatively few enter our 
houses to prey upon carpets. Further¬ 
more, our observations here, at the Cor¬ 
nell insectary, indicate that those which 
are bred in houses, endeavor to escape 
feeding at once, and so transparent are 
their skins, that the contents of their 
food canals show through, and one may 
thus readily tell whether they have been 
eating red or blue fibers. Like the larvae 
of other insects, these little hairy crea¬ 
tures have to shed their skins, or 
moult from time to time, to allow their 
bodies to grow. In our experiments, the 
larvae were variable in their growth, 
both as to time and number of moults. 
After the second moult, the bodies of 
the larvae take on their characteristic 
brown color. 
CARPET BEETLE IN THE DESTRUCTIVE STAGE. Fig. 180. 
outdoors as soon as they reach the beetle 
state ; and this is natural, for the food 
of the beetles, the pollen of flowers, is 
not obtainable inside the house. 
The Eggs and Larvae. 
Observation indicates that the pairing 
of the sexes does not, commonly, take 
place in our houses. We have had no 
trouble in getting plenty of eggs from 
beetles collected on flowers outdoors, 
and placed in glass cages. The beetles, 
usually, all died in 10 days after being 
placed in the cages; but during this time, 
they laid many eggs on pieces of flannel 
placed therein. _No one seems ever to 
have pictured the egg of this carpet pest, 
and I have, therefore, asked Mrs. Slinger- 
land to make a drawing of one, that the 
many readers of The R. N.-Y. may see 
how its egg looks under a microscope. 
As shown at a, Fig. 181, the egg is rather 
a peculiar object. It would take about 
70 of them, placed end to end, to meas¬ 
ure an inch; yet, as they are white in 
color, they can be seen with the naked 
eye in their nests among the fibers of 
dark-colored flannel where the mother 
Our observations indicate but one brood 
of this Carpet beetle a year in New York 
State. The change from the larva to the 
beetle develops some interesting phases 
in its life. Instead of going into the 
ground, or spinning a cocoon about it¬ 
self, the larva simply makes use of its 
last old suit of clothes ; in other words, 
its skin splits down the back and spread¬ 
ing open, reveals the yellow, tender 
pupa snugly ensconced within its hairy 
shroud as shown at f; the pupa itself 
is shown at c, all much enlarged. How 
long the pupal stage lasts, seems not to 
have been determined. Some of the 
places them. The irregular projections 
on one end serve to hold the egg more 
firmly in place among the fibers. The 
surface of the egg is very finely longi¬ 
tudinally striated, and has many small, 
elongate, irregular depressions which 
give it a slightly wrinkled appearance. 
In our cages, the eggs hatched in from 
two to three weeks. The little creature 
which emerges is shown (from the same 
pen as the egg) greatly enlarged at h. 
It is of a semi-transparent white color, 
and clothed with dark brown hairs, those 
in the tufts near the tail end being barbed 
at the end. These little larvae begin 
beetles, doubtless, emerge in the fall, 
others, perhaps, during the winter in 
houses; but our observations indicate 
that most of them appear during the 
spring and summer, egg-laying, proba¬ 
bly, taking place mostly from May on 
throughout the summer. 
We find that the larva) feed readily 
and thrive on their own cast skins and 
the dead bodies of other insects, or of 
their own parents. They seem to pre¬ 
fer old, dirty woolen goods to clean, 
new ones, and there are some indica¬ 
tions that they prefer certain colored 
fibers to others. When disturbed, the 
beetles “ play ’possum,” folding up their 
legs and feelers and feigning death. 
They are strongly attracted to the flowers 
of the plants of the family Serophulari- 
aceae ; this fact was, doubtless, recog¬ 
nized when they were named Scrophu- 
lariae Spiraeas and many other flowers, 
also, strongly attract them. House¬ 
wives afflicted with this pest should 
learn to know the insect in the beetle 
stage, as the destruction of every one 
seen would aid in the warfare against 
the insect; especially should one learn 
to discriminate between this injurious 
Carpet beetle, and the similar, but bene¬ 
ficial little Lady-bird beetles often found 
in houses. 
How to Get Rid of It. 
There is no easy way to keep this Car¬ 
pet beetle in check. When it has once 
taken possession of a house, nothing but 
the most thorough and long-continued 
measures will eradicate it. The best 
way to avoid its ravages is to use rugs 
instead of carpets, and to trap the larvae 
by placing woolen cloths on the floors of 
closets ; these cloths should be shaken 
once a week over a paper, and the in¬ 
sects captured. Carpets that are tacked 
to the floor and taken up only once or 
twice a year are unwholesome; the 
larvae thrive best in dirty carpets. When 
the carpets wear out, replace them with 
rugs or art squares ; and good carpets 
can be made over into rugs. Usually, 
carpeted floors are not finished, as rugs 
necessitate, but they can be made pre¬ 
sentable by filling the cracks with putty 
and painting the exposed part of the 
floor. The frequent shaking which neat 
housewives give rugs, soon discourages 
the Carpet beetle, and it migrates to 
more peaceful and dirtier fields. 
If carpets must be used, the practice 
of annual “ house-cleaning ” should not 
be so often carelessly and hurriedly 
performed, and it should be done, at 
least, semi-annually. But one or two 
rooms should be attended to at one 
time. The carpets should be taken up, 
thoroughly beaten, and sprayed out of 
doors with benzine, and allowed to air 
for several hours. Thoroughly sweep 
and dust the rooms, wash the floors 
down with hot water, carefully clean 
out the cracks (dirty cracks are the 
favorite haunts of the pest), and pour 
benzine or kerosene into the cracks, and 
spray it under the baseboards. Benzine 
will kill the insect in all stages ; but its 
extreme inflammability and that of its 
vapor when confined should be remem¬ 
bered, and fire carefully guarded against. 
Where the floors are poorly constructed, 
and the cracks are wide, it would be 
well to fill the cracks with a liquid 
mixture of plaster of Paris; this will 
soon harden and greatly lessen the favor¬ 
ite haunts of the insect. It is recom¬ 
mended to use tarred roofing paper 
under the carpet when relaying it. Tack 
the carpet down lightly at first, so that 
it may be easily raised on the edges and 
examined from time to time to see 
whether the pest again appears. 
Where the insect is limited to small 
areas in the carpet, a good though 
somewhat laborious method consists in 
laying a damp cloth smoothly over the 
suspected spot, and ironing it with a 
hot flat-iron ; the steam thus generated 
will pass through the carpet and kill 
the insects immediately beneath it. 
Camphor, pepper, tobacco, turpentine, 
carbolic acid, tallow, Pyrethrum pow¬ 
der, and many other substances have 
been recommended for the pest, but 
none is nearly so effective as benzine. 
Larvae have lived over three months in 
our cages where there was nothing to 
eat but a piece of red flannel, which had 
been rolled in Pyrethrum. One insecti¬ 
cide manufacturer sent us some Scrofu- 
laria Powder especially designed for the 
