[1] Not so!  Several correspondents have drawn my attention to the fact that Hooke is evidently describing the “Lepisma,” which, if not positively injurious, is often found in the warm places of old houses, especially if a little damp.  He mistook this for the Bookworm.

Entomologists even do not appear to have paid much attention to the natural history of the “Worm.”  Kirby, speaking of it, says, “the larvae of Crambus pinguinalis spins a robe which it covers with its own excrement, and does no little injury.”  Again, “I have often observed the caterpillar of a little moth that takes its station in damp old books, 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 devastators,” etc., etc.

As already quoted, Doraston’s description is very vague.  To him he is in one verse “a sort of busy worm,” and in another “a puny rankling reptile.”  Hannett, in his work on book-binding, gives “Aglossa pinguinalis” as the real name, and Mrs. Gatty, in her Parables, christens it “Hypothenemus cruditus.”

The, Rev. F. T. Havergal, who many years ago had much trouble with bookworms in the Cathedral Library of Hereford, says they are a kind of death-watch, with a “hard outer skin, and are dark brown,” another sort “having white bodies with brown spots on their heads.”  Mr. Holme, in “Notes and Queries” for 1870, states that the “Anobium paniceum” has done considerable injury to the Arabic manuscripts brought from Cairo, by Burckhardt, and now in the University Library, Cambridge.  Other writers say “Acarus eruditus” or “Anobium pertinax” are the correct scientific names.

Personally, I have come across but few specimens; nevertheless, from what I have been told by librarians, and judging from analogy, I imagine the following to be about the truth:—­

There are several kinds of caterpillar and grub, which eat into books, those with legs are the larvae of moths; those without legs, or rather with rudimentary legs, are grubs and turn to beetles.

It is not known whether any species of caterpillar or grub can live generation after generation upon books alone, but several sorts of wood-borers, and others which live upon vegetable refuse, will attack paper, especially if attracted in the first place by the real wooden boards in which it was the custom of the old book-binders to clothe their volumes.  In this belief, some country librarians object to opening the library windows lest the enemy should fly in from the neighbouring woods, and rear a brood of worms.  Anyone, indeed, who has seen a hole in a filbert, or a piece of wood riddled by dry rot, will recognize a similarity of appearance in the channels made by these insect enemies.

Among the paper-eating species are:—­