14 OUR HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



as dry bread, biscuits, rhubarb root, ginger, wafers, and 

 even so unlikely a substance as Cayenne pepper, have 

 been greedily devoured by it ; and it has also not un- 

 frequently attacked ships' biscuits, riddling them through 

 and through, and damaging them to such an extent as 

 to render them quite unfit for human food. Nor does 

 it make any difference it the vegetable matter is not in 

 its primitive condition, but has had its character so 

 much altered as is involved in having passed several 

 times through the hands of the manufacturer : thus, 

 paper will furnish it with an enjoyable meal, and books 

 even yield it physical sustenance. A curious case of the 

 latter is recorded of either this insect or some closely 

 allied species : twenty-seven folio volumes in a public 

 library were perforated in a straight line by one and 

 the same insect, and so regular was the tunnel that a 

 string could be passed through the whole length of it, 

 and the entire set of books lifted up at once thereby a 

 tolerably clear proof that the library, or, at any rate, 

 that particular portion of it, could not have been in 

 great request with human bookworms, or the insect 

 ditto would scarcely have found its course so entirely 

 unimpeded. 



Drawings and even paintings have also been destroyed 

 by this insect, and on one occasion it invaded the sacred 

 seats of learning and made away with some Arabic 

 manuscripts in a library at Cambridge, and at another 

 time wrought havoc in the herbarium of a botanist. 

 The powerful jaws of the larva, too, are not deterred 

 even by a thin coating of metal, for Westwood records 

 having seen tinfoil perforated by it, no doubt for the 

 purpose of pilfering some treasure contained beneath. 



So, while A. domesticum destroys chairs, tables, 

 picture-frames, cupboards, floors, &c., and sometimes 



