BOOKWORMS IN FACT AND FANCY. 241 



known. Some of them are met with daily in the house and else- 

 where, and arouse no unusual interest, while the world goes on 

 wondering what a bookworm is like. 



Insects injurious to books and bindings are not a new subject. 

 The Greeks and Romans observed and wrote about them, but not- 

 withstanding, their knowledge of zoology, comparatively speaking, 

 was so meager, they do not seem to have felt any of the mystery or 

 wonderment about these creatures which we have felt. The terms 

 hlatta, tinea, silphe, are frequently met with in the works of classical 

 writers, and, while we can not be sure of the particular species they 

 intended to allude to by these terms, we do in many instances know 

 from the context that the creatures known to them had like character- 

 istics with those known to us, and that they were given to literary 

 depredations as are their descendants. 



The earliest allusion to a book-destroying worm which has come 

 down to us from classical lore was rescued from oblivion by the lad 

 Salmasius in 1606, when he discovered the manuscripts of the an- 

 thology of Cephalas in the library of the Counts Palatine at Heidel- 

 berg. Among the fragments in this collection is one attributed to 

 Evenus, the sophist-poet of Paros, who wrote about 450 b. c, in which 

 the " foul destroyer " is thus berated : 



" O worst enemy of the Muses, devourer of the pages of books, 

 Foul destroyer that lurkest in a hole, ever feeding on what thou hadst 



stolen from learning, 

 Tell me, black-colored bookworm, why dost thou lie in ambush to injure 



the sacred decrees while fashioning thy envious image ? " 



Aristotle, in his History of Animals, mentioned the " little scor- 

 pionlike creature found in books " ; a characterization which obtains 

 to-day for the little creature which Leunis calls the " Bilcherscor- 

 pion." Horace addresses his finished book, to which he imputes an 

 unbecoming haste to be displayed on the booksellers' stalls, thus: 

 " When thumbed by the hands of tho vulgar, you begin to grow 

 dirty, then you will in silence feed the groveling bookworm." Ovid, 

 in his exile at Tomi, likens the " external remorse of its cares " which 

 his heart feels to the gnawing of the tinea. 



Considering the fact that Pliny is said to have comprised in his 

 l^atural History all the knowledge of the natural sciences then known, 

 it is a little surprising that he had not more to say regarding book 

 insects. Here and there in his writings, however, he speaks of worms 

 in connection with books and papers in the same casual way as other 

 classical writers, causing you to feel that he was conversant with 

 their destructive tendencies. The epigrammatist Martial in the first 

 century, and Lucian in the second, both use the term bookworm; 

 Martial, in much the same way as did Horace, warning his book of the 



TOL. LV. 19 



