THE FASTIDIOUS MOTH.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1416, 16 October 1923, Page 3

THE FASTIDIOUS MOTH.

HAVOC AMOXG CLOTHES. The clothes moth, while working its worst havoc in the early summer, is always with us. If people would only put away their airtight bag or box where every crevice is sealed so that the moth miller cannot seek her | haven, then there could be no de- ■ struction. Madam Moth will not degrade herI .self by depositing her eggs in any | cheaply made clothes. This may ap- ; pear a strange statement, yet othere is nothing strange about it. The moth wants food out of the cloth. The ready-made cloth mostly shoddy. Shoddy is reworked woollen rags, worked over many, many times. All the life and animal matter is eliminated. Vou might as well ask cattle to feed on a desert as to ask a moth to feed on such pulp. To keep woollens clean requires frequent whisking with a stiff brush; unless this is done Madam Moth will, despite your efforts and preventatives, install herself in your best and most costly clothes and deposit her eggs. Moth's eggs, by a gum moisture, attach themselves so firmly to woollen fabrics that shaking a garment or cloth out of doors will not remove them. You no doubt have noted the places where the larvae has eaten clothes. The principal places are the coat or waistcoat lapel, the dress side of a trouser, under arms and round the necks of dresses. The reason is that the iapels are sometimes spotted with soups and greasy matter from the table; the perspiration from the body makes the soiled trouser or dress an ideal feeding ground, hence these spots are Madam Moth Miller's first choice for depositing her eggs. She selects only the best qualities. Her eggs number about 50, and they are most minute in size, and they are laid on the same colour as the cloth they are laid on; if on a black cloth, the eggs are black; if on a white cloth then the eggs are white, and so on. Any woollen clippings or any clothes that are kept in dark corners are-liable to be good breeding places for clothes moth and grub. The larvae or grub is greyishwhite, and looks like a caterpillar. This is the fellow that does the real damage. Henry M. Enwright, writing on the subject, notes with amusement how many of us use tar paper, camphor, cedar and other ingredients to kill the moth. Once the eggs are laid the larvae becomes acclimatised to the smell of these ingredients, and they develop and go on feeding. The moth i miller will refuse to lay her eggs in j or about the odour arising from these j so-called preventatives, yet when nothing else is about to lay her eggs on she has been known to disregard the disagreeable smell and lay her eggs in cedar chests and camphor boxes |