378 
The Moths and Butterflies 
or they may be uniformly dull-colored; the hind wings are white or grayish. 
The palpi are long and project conspicuously, so that snout-moth is a name 
often given to the Crambids. 
Pretty little moths with shining black wings, two-spotted with white on 
the front ones, and one- or two-spotted on the hind wings, are the Desmias, 
of which the species maculalis , the grape-vine leaf-folder, is especially common, 
and often seriously injurious. The larvae fold or roll up grape-leaves and 
feed concealed inside the roll, skeletonizing the leaf by eating away all of its 
soft tissues. The larva when full-grown is a little less than an inch long, 
glossy yellowish green, and very active when disturbed. It pupates within 
the folded leaf. It is abundant in the South. 
Among the insects that attack stored grain, flour, meal, etc., are several 
Pyralids. The meal snout-moth, Pyralis farinalis, is a common pest, 
the larvae making long tubes of silk in the meal, and taking readily to cereals 
Fig. 537.—A curious hammock and its maker, Coriscum cuculipennellum, a leaf-rolling 
moth, whose larva pupates in the odd little hammock, shown in the figure. (After 
photographs by Slingerland; natural size of moth indicated by line; hammock 
natural size; a rose-leaf enlarged.) 
of all kinds and conditions, in the kernel or in the form of meal, bran, or 
straw. The moth expands one inch, the wings being light brown with red¬ 
dish reflections and a few wavy transverse lines. The Indian meal-moth, 
Plodia interpunctella, is another familiar pest in mills and stores, its small 
whitish larva, with brownish-yellow head, feeding on dry edibles of almost 
every kind, as meal, flour, bran, grain of all sorts, dried fruits, seeds, and nuts, 
condiments, roots, and herbs. It spins webs of silk with which it fastens 
together particles of the attacked food, making it unfit for our use. The moth 
expands f inch and has the fore wings cream-white at base and reddish 
