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been considered, but without proof, as imported from America. It has been known there 

 for more than 200 years, but its existence cannot be traced befoie the discovery of 

 America. The whole body of the insect is covered with very fine iridescent scales, which 

 have been used as a delicate test object for microscopes, and are the cause of its vulgar 

 name, Silver-fish. 



The earliest notice of the small European species is in R. Hooke's Micrographia, a 

 folio, London, 1665. It was printed at the expense of the Royal Society, and is an 

 account of innumerable things examined by the microscope. The book is still respected 

 for the accuracy of the author's observations. Mr. Blades calls it most amazing for its 

 equally frequent blunders. I have reason to suppose that the absurd blundering is more 

 on Mr. Blades's side. R. Hooke calls it book-worm, and states that it corrodes and eats 

 holes through the leaves and covers of books. The figure is, for the time, tolerably good 

 and recognizable. On Mr. Hooke's authority, Lepisma was reported as obnoxious to 

 books. As Mr. Hooke has apparently mixed up the destructions done by Anobium with 

 those of Lepisma, of which in the following hundred years no damages were observed, the 

 whole observation was doubted, and Prof. Herman, in Strasbourg, in his prize essay on 

 library pests, declared (1774) that Lepisma was erroneously recorded as obnoxious. This 

 was the reason that I did not mention Lepisma in my communication to the librarians, the 

 more so as in the past hundred years no new observations had again been recorded. I 

 did not mention other remarkable facts, as the Jehthio-Bibliophage, a codfish which had 

 swallowed three Puritanical treatises of John Frith, the Protestant martyr. No wonder, 

 after such a meal, the fish was soon caught and became famous in the annals of literature. 

 This is the title of a little book issued upon the occasion : " Vox Piscis, or the Book -fish, 

 containing three treatises which were found in the belly of a Codfish in Cambridge 

 Market, on midsummer eve, 1626"; great was the consternation at Cambridge upon the 

 publication of this work. 



Nevertheless, just after the delivery of my communication, new proofs of the 

 depravity of Lepisma came forward. 



" God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man." 



Prof. Westwood, of Oxford, showed to the Naturalists' Association in 1879, a framed 

 and glazed print of which the plain paper was eaten by Lepisma, while the parts covered 

 by the printing ink were untouched. I accept this as a sufficient proof of obnoxiousness, 

 the more so as the white paper is often the best part of a print. Prof. Westwood 

 mentioned that the same fact had been observed in India, where some of the Government 

 records had been injured in the same manner. 



Patrick Brown states in his Natural History of Jamaica, that Lepisma saccharina is 

 very common there, and is extremely destructive to books and all manner of woollen 

 clothing. This notice had been reproduced by Linnaeus, but was later considered as not 

 reliable. 



Mr. De Rossi writes, in 1882, as follows : Lepisma saccharina likes damp places and 

 destroys in my house paper hangings from inwards entirely. Muslin curtains were 

 perforated and the living animals found near fresh holes. Probably the curtains were 

 starched, though it is not stated. Also, insect boxes and the wings of butterflies have 

 been damaged. 



Prof. Liversidge, in Sidney, reports the same year L. saccharina as very common in 

 New South Wales. It does not do so much harm to books, as it cannot well get in 

 between the closely pressed leaves of a book, but it injures loose papers, maps and labels ; 

 the loose edges of piles or bundles of letters suffer more than the central portion. Writing 

 paper, too, probably contains more attractive matter in the way of size. The labels were 

 written only fifteen months ago, and some hundreds have been rendered totally 

 worthless. 



The same calamity is reported by Mr. H. Lucas, assistant in the Museum of the 

 Jardin des Plantes, in Paris. L. saccharina destroys labels of white paper, but the parts 

 printed with oil and minium remain untouched. The labels on starched paper were very 

 much injured, but only the white parts. When leaving for the country in 1862, he put in 

 a drawer various articles of clothing, all starched, collars, cuffs and bonnets, and returning 

 after six weeks, he found numerous holes, round or oval, in a bonnet, and Lepisma near by. 



