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Flour-moth
This wretched pest, the original habitat of which is not known, has within recent years caused a great deal of trouble and expense to millers and dealers in grain on both sides of the Atlantic. It is believed by many European entomologists to be of American origin, but this cannot be proved. Others hold that it is an importation from the Orient, and it goes under the name of the Mediterranean Flour-moth in some localities. Wherever the creature came from, it is a decided plague. Rapidly multiplying, it takes possession of mills and grain-warehouses, and seems to defy attempts to eradicate it. Each female lays from six to seven hundred eggs, and the process of generation seems, where buildings are warm, to go on continuously. Moving and airing the wheat does no good, as the insect seems to multiply in the pipes in which flour is transported in a mill from one place to another by air-pressure. Much damage is done by the habit which the larvae possess of gnawing the fine gauze of the screens in a flour-mill.
When the insect has once established itself in an elevator or mill, the only remedy appears to be to shut down, and thoroughly clean the place from top to bottom, and keep shut down and go on cleaning until not a nook or cranny is known to harbor the larvae, cocoons, or moths. The accompanying illustrations, which are taken from the pages of "Insect Life," Vol. II, will enable the student to recognize this creature in its various stages of development.
Thus far it has not become universally distributed throughout the country, but it has appeared in alarming numbers in some parts of Canada and New England. In England, Germany, and Belgium its attacks have been the subject of frequent comment. It shares an unenviable reputation with another species of the same genus, which we shall presently speak of, and with a species of Plodia, of which we shall also have something to say.
"Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame;
Each to his passion; what's in a name?"
HELEN HUNT JACKSON.-Vanity of Vanities.