STORED~PRODUCT INSECT INVESTIGATIONS 
E. A. Back, Senior Entomologist, in Charge 
On January 7 a conference was called by the Bureau of Standards in 
the office of Lt. Col. John S. Chambers, Q. M. C., Room 2215 Munitions — 
Building, War Department, Washington, D. C., for the purpose of discussing 
the desirability of starting cooperative work to determine what value, if 
any, dyes have in protecting fabrics from clothes-moth attack. There were 
present representatives of the War and Navy Departments, the Bureau of 
Standards of the Commerce Department, National Association of Dyers and. 
Cleaners, and the Bureaus of Chemistry and Entomology of the Department 
of Agriculture. Doctors Back and Cotton represented the Bureau of Ento- 
mology. 
Photographs of interest to storage concerns were sent early in Jan- 
vary, upon request, to New Haven, Conn., ta be used in the-exhibits of the 
Commercial Exhibition held in that city January 26 to February oF 
Perez Simmons read an interesting paper, entitled "The ability of 
the cheese skipper to endure unfavorable conditions," at the January 6 meet- 
ing of the Washington Entomological Society. 
The 1926 Line Book, issued in danuers by the Chicago Tribune, and 
presented to the Stored Product Insect Investigations by-a Chicago warehouse-~ 
man because of the references it contained to insects, contains several poems 
dedicated to crickets. One poem begins, "Chirp, little singer! though dark | 
is the night, You are a bringer of lyric delight," etc. This could never 
have been written by a resident. of Baltimore in that part of his city that 
was literally overrm last July by the house cricket, Gryllus domesticus. 
Dr. Caudell states that on rare occasions the house cricket breeds in large. 
numbers in city dumps, and at times swarms from such places and becomes a 
“Pharaoh's plague" to surrounding property holders.. 
TES Aces. “Hamlin, in dhavee of the Bureauts investigation of dried-_ . 
fruit insects at Fresno, Calif., addressed the Federal Business Mens! Asgo- 
Ciation of the San Joaquin Valley at the monthly meeting held in Fresno on 
January 15. The subject sclected for him was, "Bugs with which I have come 
in contact." Aside from casual reference to ticks, fleas, bedbugs, and 
other unpleasant contacts, the address dealt.with the-effort toward biolog 
ical control of introduced cactus pests in Australia. Mr. Hamlin. resigned 
from the direction of that project to resume Wore in the Bureau. 
On January 15 some importers of raw eile from Japan called the atten- 
tion of the Bureau to a case of serious loss and injury to raw silk by 
cadelle larvae. This is another instance of a stored-product pest, normally 
a feeder upon grain and grain products, causing. sere to a non-food product 
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stored in the vicinity of its food. r ae a: 
Departmental Bulletin 1428, "The Cadelle," repent issued, has in 
the past two months received considerable attention in the grain and milling 
journals. 
SEA si ce 
