i 
138 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. : 
‘ 
ever the expense: but happily it seems endowed with very limited powers 
of migration ; for, though it has spread along both the South and East 
Piers of Bridlington harbour, it has not yet, as Mr. Lutwidge informs me, 
reached the dolphin nor an insulated jetty within the harbour. No other 
remedy against its attacks is known than that of keeping the wood free 
from salt water for three or four days, in which case it dies ; but this 
method, it is obvious, can be rarely applicable.* 
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 1 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 Scolytide (Hypothenemus eruditus Westw.), which 
Mr. Westwood found burrowing in considerable numbers in the same 
situation.* A mite (Cheyletus eruditus) eats the paste that fastens the 
paper over the edges of the binding, and so loosens it.® I have also often 
observed the caterpillar of another little moth, of which I have not ascer- 
tained 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 
pertinae and striatum) also attack books, and will even bore through 
several volumes. M. Peignot mentions an instance where, in a public 
library but little frequented, ¢venty-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 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 pre- 
served in a portefeuille, and even paintings ; it appearing from a_parlia- 
mentary report on the state of the paintings in the National Gallery, 
and subsequent observations of M. Waagen, that the paste applied to the 
canvas of the fine picture of the Raising of Lazarus, by Sebastian del 
Piombo, has been so attacked by the larve of an insect (supposed to be 
Anobium 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 
1 Tn order to ascertain how far pure sea water is essential to this insect, and con- 
sequently what danger exists of its being introduced into the wood-work of our docks 
and piers communicating with our salt-water rivers, as at Hull, Liverpool, Bristol, 
Ipswich, &c., where it might be far more injurious than eyen 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 solution of common 
salt over the wood every other day, so as to keep the insects constantly wet. On 
examining it this day (I’eb. 5th, 1816) I found them alive; and, what seems to prove 
them in as good health as in their natural habitat, numbers having established 
themselves in a piece of fir-wood which I nailed to the oal, and have in this short 
interval, and in winter too, bored many cells in it. 
2 See p. 133. 5 Reaum, iii, 270. 
4 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 34. 5 Schrank, Znum. Ins. Austr. 518. 1058. 
© Hlorue’s Introd. to Bibliography, i. 311. 
