The Cloth Eaters

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 59, 2 December 1933, Page 20

The Cloth Eaters

Wr 1-IITISII. .slender, flimsy, flat, silken tubes, about a quarter oi an inch loud, sent by Mr. T. Walmsley, of Paeroa, Ohiuemuri County, seem too small and too insignificant to be harmful, but, like many other things, they should not be despised on that account. They were made by tiny caterpillars. lhe.se have been identified by Mr. G. V. Hudson, of Karori, Wellington, as the young of a very plentiful and very destructive species of ease-making clothes-moth. Tinea pellionella. Each caterpillar carries its little portable home with it. protruding its head from the opening when it feeds on woollens ami othei material. Mr. Hudson reports that it is particularly destructive m wardrobes when woollen garments have been left there for a long time. The species is not a native of New Zealand. In the usual secretive way, it has come to this Dominion with trade, probably from the Old Country. Wherever its original country may be. it has distributed itself widely over the civilised world, eating its way through woollen goods tweeds, rugs and valuable furs. It is establishing itself in New Zealand, having come years ago. Its success is attributed to adults and young loving darkness rather than light and keeping well out of view, to ample and easy supplies of food and to the female's capacity to lay eggs. A single female may lay 100 eggs or more at one time. In warm ueathci. a baby eaterpillar may emerge from an egg after a few days. Cold weathei retards incubation, which may extend to three weeks. In any ease, a caterpillar is no sooner liberated from its prison than it begins to eat with an appetite to match a splendid digestion. Nature has atoned for this by cutting off appetite as soon as the caterpillar stage is passed. The adults, samples of fragility, never eat. All damage laid at the insect’s door is done by the caterpillars. They eat ami eat and never have enough. Females have sufficient foresight to lay their eggs in material that the caterpillars will eat The caterpillars bite off particles of the material,

(By J. DRUMMOND, F.L.S., F.Z.S., for “The Dominion.”)

fasten them together with silk and build the tubes that serve as homes. If a caterpillar wishes to rest or to moult, a trying process, it withdraws into its tube, which it anchors by a few threads to a piece of cloth. On springing into activity, it bites the threads and crawls off with its home. While this species is not a New Zealander, the family to which it belongs, the Tineidae, is represented in the Dominion’s insect life. This might be expected in view of the fact that the number of' known species in the family is estimated at not less than 4000. The United Kingdom alone has about 700. New Zealand’s total is given by Dr. R. J. Tillyard as 97 Australia’s as 394. Mr. Hudson estimates that the family constitutes more' than a third of the whole order of moths and butterflies in any region, and that probably there is the same proportion in New Zealand. Coming down from ecstasy to facts in this work-a-day life, different countries have discovered different remedies against clothes-moths. Sulphur fumes are effective in America. In England, clothes and valuable furs are protected by wrapping them in sound paper, leaving no crevices where Ihe edges of the paper meet. Experience in England has shown that garments infested may be cleared completely by free exposure to air ami sunshine, An Australian. Mr. A. Musgrave, in "The Australian Museum Magazine.’ warns housewives not to leave rooms with drawn blinds, as moths dislike light. Clothing should not be kept in trunks or cupboards without flake naphthalene, or, better, paradichloro-benzene in sufficient quantity, about one pound to a trunk. Caterpillars found in a garmeu. should be destroyed by fumigation. This is done by placing a saucer full of carbon tetrachloride on the garments in the box and leaving the box closed for forty-eight hours. Flake naphthalene, moth-balls, or camphor are deterrents. Sufficient paradichloro-benzene in a confined space will kill all adult moths, caterpillars and eggs present. If infestation is very bad Mr. Musgrave recommends that an expert should be engaged to fumigate with hydrocyanic gas.