42 
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 17 
outbreaks, the writers were assigned to an investigation of the biology 
of the insect. The present paper is a brief report of the progress of this 
investigation, which is being carried on at a field laboratory near Silver 
Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington. 
As is well known, the Angoumois grain moth is a cereal pest of long 
standing both in Europe and in the United States. It is now distributed 
widely over the world. Since 1736 the insect has claimed the attention 
of French entomologists, beginning with the famous Reaumur, and in 
1760 it caused such great damage in the now obsolete province of An¬ 
goumois (which included a region near the west coast and north of 
Bordeaux) that an appeal was made to the government for aid. There 
followed an exhaustive study of the pest by Duhamel and Tillet, two 
members of the Paris Academy of Sciences. They published in 1762 
an illustrated report of more than 300 pages, one of the outstanding 
early contributions to the literature of economic entomology. These 
investigators recorded the important fact that standing grain is infested 
by moths which emerge from stored grain and fly to the fields where 
oviposition takes place on the developing wheat. 
In this country infestation evidently first became noticeable in North 
Carolina, about 1728. Numerous accounts of the insect have since 
appeared here, but a detailed study of some phases of its life history 
has not been made. The influences which affect the rate of increase 
should be understood as far as possible, and the present report refers 
to some of these factors. 
The fecundity of the moth appears to have been underestimated 
by other workers. Duhamel and Tillet recorded 60 to 90 eggs as the 
production of the female. King’s work in Pennsylvania in 1917 re¬ 
sulted in egg records up to 146 eggs. Selected records given in Table 1 
show that totals of more than 200 eggs are not uncommon, while a few 
moths deposit nearly 300. 
The females do not require the presence of grain as a stimulant to 
abundant oviposition. When females confined in vials are provided 
with two pieces of cardboard held rather tightly together with a paper 
clip, they usually deposit all of their eggs in the crevice between the 
cardboard strips, the eggs being glued in place in large clusters. Drink¬ 
ing water was given to many of the pairs and this was taken eagerly 
through the uncoiled proboscis. The average number of eggs laid by 81 
females thus treated was 133, the individual records ranging from zero 
to 283. 
The moths mate promptly after emergence and remain in copula for a 
