FLOUR AND MEAL INSECTS. Various forms of small whitish caterpillars and darker colored "worms') are commonly found in flour and meal and manufactured products of different kinds. The most prominent of these is the Mediterranean flour moth (Ephestia kuehniella), which has been termed a veritable scourge in flouring-mills. It was practically unknown as a pest until 1877, and in North America is still limited to portions of Cali fornia, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania, where flour-milling is an important industry. The moth has a wing-expanse of a little less than an inch, and is of a pale lead-gray color. The caterpillars are whitish, with long but in conspicuous hairs, and make the trouble while searching for a proper place for transforming to the pupa stage. Wherever it crawls it drags after it a large quantity of silk, with the result that flour becomes felted together and lumpy and the mill machinery gets clogged, requiring frequent and expensive stoppages. The entire life cycle of this insect may he accomplished in 38 days, hence in well-heated mills or other buildings inhabited by the insects from four to six generations may be produced. When a mill is found infested the entire building must usually be fumigated. Sometimes a whole dis trict becomes overrun, and in this case great care must be observed that the insect does not spread from one mill to another. Various reme dies are used for eradicating the pest, including the free use of bisnlphid of carbon and hydro cyanic-acid gas, the use of °steam-sweepers) and °elevator brushes.* The Indian-meal moth (Plodia interpuncc tella) somewhat resembles the preceding, but is smaller; the outer halves of the fore-wings are dark greasy brown with metallic reflections, and the larva usually has a reddish or greenish tinge. It has the same habit of webbing up
flour, but is not so great a pest as the Mediter ranean flour-moth, possibly because it has a larger range of food material, feeding on nearly all forms of dried vegetable matter, among which are dried fruits and jellies, which have earned it the title of °pantry moth.* It is to be found in nearly every store and household, and particularly where dried vegetable foods are neglected for any length of time. The meal snout-moth (Pyralis farinalis) is rarer than the preceding, and seldom does injury to flour or meal, although it spoils clover hay.
Two species of beetles (Tenebrio molitor and obscurus) and their larva are popularly known as °meal-worms,* both in this country and abroad. The former is a shining brown beetle over half an inch long, and produces a yellow meal-worm; the latter is dull black, and produces a dark brown meal-worm. They are most apt to be troublesome in dark locations, in feed-stores and in stables; hut are useful when raised under control, since they are sala ble as food for mocking-birds, nightingales and other cage birds.
Flour beetles or °weevils* are little flattened reddish beetles of the same family (Teriebrio nidre) as the meal-worms and are great pests in mills and storehouses. The chief source of an ' noyance from these insects is due to their im parting a highly offensive and persistent odor to the substances which they infest, which in clude various drugs, snuff, capsicum, ginger, dried peas and beans, baking powder, nuts and cabinets of dried insects. Several species occur in America. They differ somewhat in struc ture and in habits, but may be controlled by the use of bisulphid of carbon. See WEEVIL.