324 OUR HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



keep out this foe of books as one might have imagined ; 

 even an iron safe has been found insufficient to protect 

 the treasures enclosed therein, for in the year 1885 Mr. 

 R. Adkin exhibited, at a meeting of the Entomological 

 Society, a Lepisma of some kind which was found swarm- 

 ing on some account books that were constantly kept 

 in an iron safe in Aldgate, London. Visions of the 

 possible erasures which might thus be effected in im- 

 portant legal documents are not reassuring, and show 

 Lepisma to be an enemy to which no quarter must be 

 given. Perhaps one of the strangest spots in which the 

 silver fish has been found is old martins' nests, where 

 on one occasion M. Cornelius discovered more than forty 

 examples in the middle of winter. 



