Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/224

220 beetle and its larvæ hold forth—scarcely improving the flavor of the tobacco for smoking.

Among the Lepidoptera we find valiant aids to the beetles in destructive work on stored products. There are various kinds of meal-moths,

feeding on whole or prepared grains, and some of these, like the Mediterranean flour moth, cause serious troubles in mills. The well-known "Angoumois grain moth" not infrequently ruins entire crops of wheat for milling purposes, and in barns and granaries breeds continuously. Dried fruits are attacked by similar species and indeed scarcely anything in the pantry is exempt from the small caterpillars which usually live in silken tubes of their own construction.

And then there are the clothes and carpet moths which cause troubles of their own and are sources of much worry and expense to a part of the population not ordinarily interested in entomological matters. Incidentally they are sources of income to others who thrive on

 A clothes-moth, with its larva free and in a case; from the Division of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture.

selling compounds more or less effective in protecting fabrics against the ravages of the "moths."

In the order Hymenoptera there are comparatively few species, confined practically to one series of families—the ants—that cause trouble in our households. But these, where they do occur, may exceed a combination of all the others in the annoyance and positive