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writer to visit St. Augustine. With tlie cooperation of the Rev. I. 

 Nunan and the Rev. John H. O'Keefe, the books of the rectory were 

 examined and found in some instances to be badly infested. Later, 

 the library of St. Joseph's Academy, St. Augustine, was found to be 

 very generally infested. It was also learned that the early cathedral 

 records, including the vital statistics of early inhabitants, had been 

 so damaged by the insects that they were reconditioned during 1937 

 by the National Archives to prevent their utter destruction. Wlien 

 it was found that books in the public libraries of other Florida cities 

 were not infested with the same insect, everything pointed to the col- 

 lections of the late Bishop Moore and the cathedral records as the 

 original sources of the infestation at St. Leo and St. Augustine. 



Upon further inquiry, it was learned from Father Nunan that 

 Bishop Moore's aptitude for historic research had led him to dis- 

 cover that all the records of the cathedral, including the vital statis- 

 tics and church furnishings, had been loaded into the ship Out Lady 

 of Light^ under the command of Don Marcos Capitillo, and carried to 

 Havana, where they arrived February 6, 1764. This effort of the 

 Bishop of Havana, in charge of the Catholic diocese then including 

 the West Indies, Florida, and Louisiana, to protect the possessions 

 of the St. Augustine Mission from destruction by the English when 

 they took over the rule of Florida, resulted in the depositing of the 

 records, in the form of handwritten, bound volumes, in the archives 

 of what is now called Columbus Cathedral in Havana. There they 

 remained until Bishop Moore, discovering them and recognizing their 

 great historical importance to the State of Florida, negotiated their 

 return to the Archives of the St. Augustine Cathedral in the year 

 1913, As no other books in Florida had been found infested by this 

 destructive bookworm except those originating in the St. Augustine 

 Cathedral or in the house of Bishop Moore, it was suspected that 

 when the records were returned from Cuba, they carried an infesta- 

 tion which later was carried in gifts of books to the Catholic institu- 

 tions above mentioned. A visit to Havana in 1938 proved the pest 

 to be widely distributed in many book stalls, in the National Library 

 in the Capitol Building, and in the Columbus Cathedral. In the 

 closely guarded archives of the Columbus Cathedral itself some of 

 the unused volumes of old records, some dating back to the sixteenth 

 century, were so badly riddled that the pages could not be turned. 

 There seems little doubt but that this bookworm was introduced into 

 Florida at St. Augustine with the return of the cathedral records 

 after storage in the Columbus Cathedral, Havana, from 1764 to 1913, 

 and that from St. Augustine, infestations were carried to St. Leo, Fla. 

 In 1939 the same insect was found to be causing great destruction in 

 the unused books of the library of St. Charles College at Grand 



