138 ■ INDIRECT IXJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



ever the expense: but happily it seems endowed with very limited powers 

 of migration ; for, tiioiigh it has spread along both the South and East 

 Piers of Bridlington harbour, it has not yet, as Mr. Lutwidge informs me, 

 reached the dolpiiin nor an insulated jetty within the harbour. No other 

 remedy against its attacks is known than that of keeping the wood free 

 from salt water for three or four days, in which case it dies ; but this 

 method, it is obvious, can be rarely applicable.^ 



How dear are their books, their cabinets of the various productions of 

 nature, and their collections of prints and other works of art and science, 

 to the learned, the scientific, and the virtuosi ! Even these precious 

 treasures have their insect enemies. The larva of Aglossa pinguinatis, 

 whose ravages in another quarter I have noticed before", will establish 

 itself upon the binding of a book, and spinning a robe, which it covers 

 with its own excrement^, will do it no little injury ; as also does a minute 

 beetle of the family of ScolytidcE {Hypothenemus eruditus Westw.), which 

 Mr. Westwood found burrowing in considerable numbers in the same 

 situation.* A mite {Cheyletus eruditus) eats the paste that fastens the 

 paper over the edges of the binding, and so loosens it.^ I have also often 

 observed the caterpillar of another little moth, of which I have not ascer- 

 tained the species, that takes its station in damp old books, between the 

 leaves, and there commits great ravages ; and many a black-letter rarity, 

 which in these days of Bibliomania would have been valued at its weight 

 in gold, has been snatched by these destroyers from the hands of book- 

 collectors. The little wood-boring beetles before mentioned (Anobiiun 

 pertinax and striatum) also attack books, and will even bore through 

 several volumes. M. Peignot mentions an instance where, in a pubhc 

 library but little frequented, twenty-seven folio volumes were perforated in 

 a straight line by the same insect (probably one of these species), in such 

 a manner that, on passing a string through the perfectly round hole made 

 by it these twenty-seven volumes could be raised at once.® The animals 

 last mentioned also destroy prints and drawings, whether framed or pre- 

 served in a portefeuille, and even paintings ; it appearing from a parlia- 

 mentary report on the state of the paintings in the National Gallery, 

 and subsequent observations of M. Waagen, that the paste applied to the 

 canvas of the fine picture of the Raising of Lazarus, by Sebastian del 

 Piombo, has been so attacked by the larvae of an insect (supposed to be 

 Anobium paniceuni) that its destruction is to be feared if some remedy 

 cannot be found. The same insect has done considerable injury, as we 

 learn from jMr. Holme, to the Arabic manuscripts in the Cambridge 



1 In order to ascertain how far pure sea water is essential to this insect, and con- 

 sequently what danger exists of its being introduced into the wood-work of our docka 

 and piers communicating with our salt-water rivers, as at Hull, Liverpool, Bristol, 

 Ipswich, &c., where it might be far more injurious than even on the coast, I have, 

 since December 15tli, IS 16, when Mr. Lutwidge was so kind as to furnish me with a. 

 piece of oak full of the insects in a living state, poured a weak solution of common 

 salt over the wood every other day, so as to keep the insects constantly wet. On 

 examining it this day (Feb. 5th, 1816) I found them alive; and, what seems to prove 

 them in as good health as in their natural habitat, numbers having established 

 themselves in a piece of lir-wood Avhich I nailed to tiie oak, and have in this short 

 interval, and in winter too, bored manv cells in it. 



2 See p. 133. " 3 Reaum. iii. 270. 



4 Trans. Ent. Soc. Land. i. 34. * Schrank, Enum. Ins. Atcstr. 513. 1058. 



^ Home's Introd. to Bibtiography, i. 311. 



