INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. I73 



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 pinguinalis, 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 Scolytidct (Hypothencmus eruditus Westw.), which Mr. West- 

 wood found burrowing in considerable numbers in the same situation.^ A 

 mite (^Cheyletus eruditus) eats the paste that fastens the paper over the 

 edge of the binding, and so loosens it.^ I have also often observed the 

 caterpillar of another little moth, of which I have not ascertained 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 (^Anobium yertinax and 

 striatum) also attacks books, and will even bore through several volumes. 

 M. Peignot mentions an instance where, in a public library but little 

 frequented, tiventy-semn 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 preserved in a porte- 

 feuille, and even paintings ; it appearing from a parliamentary report on 

 the state of the paintings in the National Gallery, and subsequent obser- 

 vations of M. Waagen, that the paste applied to the canvass 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 Anohium paniceum), 

 that its destruction is to be feared if some remedy cannot be found. The 

 same insect has done considerable injury, as we learn from Mr. Holme, to 

 the Arabic manuscripts in the Cambridge Library brought from Cairo by 

 Burckhardt.^ Our collections of quadrupeds, birds, insects, and plants 

 have likewise several terrible insect enemies, which, without pity or re- 

 morse, often destroy or mutilate our most highly prized specimens. Ptinus 

 fur and Anthrenus musceorum, two minute beetles, are amongst the worst ; 

 especially the latter, whose singular gliding larva, when once it gets 

 amongst them, makes astonishing havoc, the birds soon shedding their 

 feathers, and the insects falling to pieces. Mr. W. S. MacLeay informs 

 me that at the Havanna it is exceedingly difficult to preserve insects, &-c., 

 as the ants devour every thing. One of the worst plagues of the ento- 



it might be far more injurious than even on the coast, I have, since December 15th, 1815, 

 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 solmion 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 have established themselves in a piece of fir-wood which I nailed to the oak, and 

 have in this short interval, and in winter too, bored many ceils in it. 



> See p. 168. » Reaum. iii. 270. 



3 Trans. Ent. Soc. Land. i. 34. * Schrank, Enum. Ins. Austr. 513. 1058. 



* Home's Introd. to Bibliography, i. 311. 



* Trans. Ent. Soc. Land. ii. proc. xlii. xliii. ; proc. 18. ix. 



15* 



