366 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN" INSTITUTION, 19 39 



destroyed by insects. Among the very early writers, Aristotle, writ- 

 ing in Athens about 335 B. C, mentions creatures in books resembling 

 grubs found in garments. Horace (65-8 B. C.) expressed the fear 

 that his writings would eventually become "food for vandal moths." 

 Ovid (43 B. C.-A. D. 18), while in exile, likens the "constant gnaw- 

 ing of sorrow" at his heart to the gnawing of the bookworm "as the 

 book when laid away is nibbled by the worm's teeth." Moses, ad- 

 dressing Joshua, gave instructions regarding the preservation of the 

 books of the Pentateuch by anointing them with cedar oil and storing 

 them in earthern vessels. Philippus of Thessalonica early in the 

 first century A. D. compared satirically the grammarians of that day 

 to bookworms, thus first voicing so far as is known a comparison 

 now used so often that instinctively one thinks of a very studious 

 person as a "bookworm." Ausonius, who lived in the fourth century 



A. D., scoffs at the tutor who prefers to bury himself in "worm-eaten 

 and outlandish scrolls" rather than give himself to more familiar 

 pursuits and refers to a choice between preserving writings with cedar 

 oil or allowing them to perish as food for worms. Even Pliny the 

 Elder stated that dust is productive of worms in wools and cloths and 

 "these will breed in paper also," thus giving rise to a theory con- 

 cerning the generation of worms still believed today by not a few 

 persons. All evidence indicates that insects have always been foes 

 of the written and printed word. 



The seriousness of the bookworm problem led the Royal Society of 

 Gottingen in 1774 and the International Library Congress in 1903 

 to offer prizes for a satisfactory solution. William Blades in 1888 

 wrote The Enemies of Books in which he has a chapter entitled "The 

 Bookworm." But it was C. V. Houlbert who made the most serious 

 attempt to discuss this group of insects in his book entitled "Les 

 Insectes Ennemis des Livres," published in 1903, doubtless inspired 

 by the prize offered by the International Library Congress held that 

 year in Paris. But when one reviews the long list of articles dealing 

 with book insects, "in fact or fancy," as set forth in the truly tine 

 bibliography of 493 items prepared by Ralph H. Carruthers and Harry 



B. Weiss and published in 1936 in the fortieth volume of the Bulletin 

 of the New York Public Library, there comes the conviction that book 

 insects are a menace not confined to the past and that their destructive 

 work still continues in libraries of the unwary. 



Although bookworms have figured much in prose and poetry, the 

 informed person reading the literature about them must confess that, 

 in the light of modern entomological knowledge, most of the earlier 

 writers had more knowledge of books than of the insects attacking 

 the books. The best works are those that are confined to a discussion 

 of specific instances of destruction by authoritatively identified in- 



