Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/349

Rh the moths. In more than one case it was found that clothes belonging to men using no tobacco were free from the attacks of moths, while in the pockets of-those who smoked constantly were found both eggs and larvæ mixed with bits of tobacco, the garments having been eaten in various places. Of course, this is not an absolute proof of the inefficacy of tobacco, as there may have been other causes of attraction, and fresh, clean tobacco may, after all, be found effectual.

The larvæ or the eggs can be killed by putting the article in which they are found in a tightly closed vessel, and plunging it for a short time into boiling water, or it can be placed in an oven heated to a temperature of 150° Fahr.

It is hardly necessary to describe the moth, which, although so small, is easily recognized as an enemy by most housewives, though in many cases little moths of various species attracted to our rooms by the lamp-light in the evening are often mistaken for the clothes-moth and destroyed. It may be well to state that the clothes-moth rarely flits about the light.

Soon after the moth issues from the cocoon the female finds its way to the substance suitable for food for its young, and upon this material it lays fifty or more eggs. In about a week the egg is hatched, and almost immediately the worm begins to eat, and not only uses for food the fibers of the article upon which the egg was laid, but also makes of the material a covering for itself—a little tube in which it lives, spinning for a lining the softest silk, which it emits from glands in the head. From time to time, as the little worm grows, it enlarges its case, either by adding to the ends or by cutting with its sharp jaws little slits in the sides of the case, filling in the space between the edges with the substance nearest at hand, forming a neat patch. Not content with eating and making a shelter for itself of the cloth upon which it lives, the little worm cuts through the cloth as it makes its way in various directions, dragging its case after it. If the case is torn from it, or in any way injured, it soon makes a new one or patches the old. After a while, at the approach of warm weather, the little worm closes the ends of its case and changes to a pupa or chrysalis, and in two or three weeks the moth appears.

(Anthrenus scrophulariæ).—Within fifteen or twenty years there has appeared a new addition to the already long list of injurious insects introduced into this country from Europe. Although called a bug, which is the name commonly applied to all insects having inconspicuous wings, it is in reality a beetle, and why the name buffalo is applied is not known for a certainty; some say it was first noticed in this country in the city of Buffalo, New York, while one writer says it was named from its fancied resemblance to a buffalo. Whatever may be the