THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 225 



is more on Mr. Blades' side. R. Ho'oke calls it Book-worm, and states 

 that it corrodes and eats holes through the leaves and covers of books. 

 The figure is for the time tolerably good and recognizable. On Mr. 

 Hooke's authority, Lepisma was reported as obnoxious to books. As Mr. 

 Hooke has apparently mixed up the destructions done by Anobium with 

 those of Lepisma, of which in the following hundred years no damages 

 were observed, the whole observation was doubted, and Prof. Herman, in 

 Strasbourg, in his prize essay on library pests, declared (1774) that 

 Lepisma was erroneously recorded as obnoxious. This was the reason 

 that I did not mention Lepisma in my communication to the librarians, 

 the more so as in the past hundred years no new observations had again 

 been recorded. I did not mention other remarkable facts, as the Jehthio- 

 Bibliophage, a codfish which had swallowed three Puritanical treatises of 

 John Frith, the Protestant martyr. No wonder, after such a meal, the fish 

 was soon caught and became famous in the annals of literature. This is 

 the title of a little book issued upon the occasion : " Vox Piscis, or the 

 Book-fish, containing three treatises which were found in the belly of a 

 Codfish in Cambridge Market, one midsummer eve, 1626 ;" great was the 

 consternation at Cambridge upon the publication of this work. 



Nevertheless, just after the delivery of my communication, new proofs 

 of the depravity of Lepisma came forward. 



" God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man," 

 Prof Westwood, of Oxford, showed to the Naturalists' Association in 

 1879, a framed and glazed print of which the plain paper was eaten by 

 Lepisma, while the parts covered by the printing ink were untouched. I 

 accept this as a sufficient proof of obnoxiousness, the more so as the 

 white paper is often the best part of a print. Prof. Westwood mentioned 

 that the same fact had been observed in India, where some of the Gov- 

 ernment records had been injured in the same manner. 



Patrick Brown states in his Natural History of Jamaica, that Lepisma 

 saccharina is very common there, and extremely destructive to books and 

 all manner of woolen clothing. This notice had been reproduced by 

 Linnseus, but was later considered as not reliable. 



Mr. De Rossi writes in 1882 as follows : Lepisma saccharina likes 

 damp places and destroys in my house paper hangings from inwards 

 entirely. Muslin curtains were perforated and the living animals found 

 near fresh holes. Probably the curtains were starched, though it is not 



