INDIKECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



205 



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 observations of M. Waagen, that the paste applied to 

 the canvass of the fine picture of the Raising of Lazarus, by Se- 

 bastian del Piombo, has been so attacked by the larvae of an 

 insect (supposed to hQ Anobium panicemn), 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 remorse, often destroy or mu- 

 tilate our most highly prized specimens. Ptinus fur and 

 Anthrenus muscBorum, 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- 

 mologist is a mite (^Acarus destructor Schrank) : this, if his 

 specimens be at all damp, eats up all the muscular parts 

 ( Cantharis vesicatoria being almost the only insect that is not 

 to its taste), and thus entirely destroys them. If spiders by 

 any means get amongst them, they will do no little mischief. 

 — Some I have observed to be devoured by a minute moth, 

 perhaps Tinea insectella ^ ; and in the posterior thighs of a 

 species of Locusta from China I once found, one in each 

 thigh, a small beetle congenerous with Antherophagus pallens, 

 that had devoured the interior. It is, I believe, either Acarus 

 destructor or Cheyletus eruditus that eats the gum employed 

 to fasten down dried plants. 



There are other insects which do not confine themselves to 

 one or two articles, but make a general and indiscriminate 



J Trans. Ent. Soc, Lond. ii. proc. xlii. xliii. ; proc. 18. ix. 



2 Atropos pulsatorius does much mischief by devouring the more delicate 

 parts of minute insects in collections in which camphor or some other insectifuge 

 is not kept. 



