INSECTS INJURIOUS TO CLOTHES 217 



paste. Even the gold lettering on volumes has been 

 eaten to get at the sizing beneath, and gummed labels used 

 in museums and on books in libraries are often destroyed 

 by them. Heavily glazed paper offers an attractive source 

 of food to these insects and books made of such paper 

 often have their leaves badly scraped and scarred. Wall 

 paper is sometimes attacked by fish-moths and the starch 

 so eaten up over a large area that the paper breaks loose 

 from the walls. Starched collars, cuffs, and shirts, espe- 

 cially when laid away for a long time, are apt to suffer injury. 

 Silk garments and silken tapestries have been injured 

 occasionally, due, probably, to the material used in them 

 for stiffening. In the Museum of Comparative Zoology 

 at Cambridge, 700 labels on a collection of Paleontological 

 specimens were all injured by fish-moths. Many of these 

 were eaten enough to obliterate the writing and riddle the 

 paper with holes. All of them had to be rewritten. The 

 injury in this particular case, however, was ascribed to 

 another species (Lepisma domestica). In such cases the 

 loss is considerable and might be very serious if the labels 

 on rare specimens became so defaced that the records 

 could not be made out. Undoubtedly these insects do 

 eat paper, when driven to it, for when S. Henshaw 

 inclosed some of the fish-moths in a jar with only paper 

 they readily ate holes in it. It is recorded that some 

 books kept in a safe were attacked by a species of Lepisma. 

 Occasionally vegetable drugs or similar materials are 

 damaged by fish-moths. 



Description of the insect. — The fish-moth is a member 

 of the lowest and simplest group of insects. It has no 

 wings and its body is about one-third of an inch in length, 

 tapers gradually from the head to the posterior extremity, 



