INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 237 



the scientific, and the virtuosi! Even these precious 

 treasures have their insect enemies. The larva of Cram- 

 busjainguinalis, 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 15 , will do it no little injury. A mite, 

 (Acarus eruditus, Schrank) eats the paste that fastens the 

 paper over the edges of the binding, and so loosens it c . 

 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 men- 

 tioned {Anobium jperiinax and striatum) also attack 

 books, and will even bore through several volumes. 

 M. Peignot mentions an instance where, in a public li- 

 brary but little frequented, twenty-seven 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 cord through the perfectly round hole 

 made by it, these twenty-seven volumes could be raised 

 at once d . The animals last mentioned also destroy 

 prints and drawings, whether framed, or preserved in 

 a porte-feuille. Our collections of quadrupeds, birds, 

 insects and plants have likewise several terrible insect 

 enemies, which without pity or remorse often destroy 



a See p. 226. b Reaum. iii. 270. 



c Schrank Enum. Ins. Austr.5\3. 1058. 

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



