Word: moth
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...their wild state, says Moncrieff in the current issue of Discovery, moths did not eat wool. Their larvae ate dead animals on which the females deposited their small white eggs. But as soon as man started to make woolen clothes, many thousands of years ago, some moths began to change their feeding habits. With a good deal of difficulty, says Moncrieff, they learned to digest wool, have not yet completely adapted themselves to their unnatural diet. Researchers have proved that moth larvae grow faster when fed on fish meal or casein, and that unless they get vitamin B they never...
...Most moth repellents and mothproofing chemicals, says Moncrieff, are expensive, not very successful, and often wash out of the wool eventually. So wool-protecting chemists tried another, more subtle approach. Noting that even the best-adjusted moths can barely digest wool, they tried to make it completely indigestible...
...natural wool, the long molecules are connected by "disulphide cross-linkages." These the chemists replaced by "bis-thioether cross-linkages." The artificial links are as strong mechanically as the natural ones, so the wool is as strong. The links are also stronger chemically, and the moths' digestive juices cannot break them down. Moth larvae put on a diet of modified wool quickly starve to death, even though a few nutritious food stains are added. Moncrieff predicts that when all wool is modified in this way, clothes moths will have to return to their primitive diet...
Sometimes insects are benefited by spraying. A woodland plot in Massachusetts, infested with gypsy moth caterpillars, was sprayed with 1.5 lbs. of DDT per acre. With the caterpillars wiped out, the forest remained green and flourishing, and soon had a normal population of non-pest insects. A nearby plot, left unsprayed, was defoliated by the caterpillars and lost two-thirds of its normal insect population...
Handyman. In Lincoln, Mass., John Joseph Kelliher, 69, decided that he would retire because of poor health, left vacant the jobs of police chief, constable, water commissioner, water department superintendent, moth superintendent, slaughtering inspector, dog officer and sealer of weights & measures...