CARPET BEETLES
AND THEIR
CONTROL
CARPET BEETLES, or so-called "buffalo moths," are common household
pests usually associated in their destructive work with clothes moths.
Ordinarily they are not so destructive as clothes moths, because they
reproduce only once a year, and then not so abundantly.
Experienced housewives throughout the North are familiar with the
stout, oval, reddish-brown, hairy grubs or larvæ of the common carpet
beetle, found beneath carpets or in clothing. In southern homes,
however, the longer, slender, golden-brown larva of the black carpet
beetle, with its tuft of golden bristles, is more common.
All carpet-beetle larvæ feed upon fabrics or upon various articles,
including upholstered furniture, containing wool, silk, hair, fur,
bristles, or feathers. They even feed upon dried animal matter.
Protection against carpet beetles can be secured in tight chests and
trunks by the use of the crystals of naphthalene, paradichlorobenzene,
or camphor, or by the fumigants carbon disulphid and carbon
tetrachloride Where infestation is general throughout a house
or is serious in closets, it may be advisable to fumigate with
hydrocyanic-acid gas, carbon disulphid, or sulphur, but none of these
fumigation methods should be employed except by a person well informed
regarding them. The foregoing remedies and others, such as cold
storage, red-cedar chests, heat, and the treatment of infested floor
cracks, are discussed in this bulletin.
Washington, D. C.