The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-03-17

trouble for the librarian and bool1lover Yet few have ever caught the bookworm at work, although many have seen the sad havoc that evidences his activity It Is a mistake to suppose that the "bookworm attacks only old volumes and eschews the modern book. The Rev. | J. F. X. O'Connor in his little book, Facts About Bookworms,' New York, 1898, has shown that the 'bookworm' does not object to moderrA paper adul- terated with china clay and chemical bleaches, and asserts, from personal knowledge that "bookworms'' destroy modern books every year in Philadelphia Boston, Providence and New York. He actually caught the worms at work in re- cent volumes of the New York World and Scientific American in one of the libraries.
 Of course the greater care taken of books in modern libraries greatly les sens the danger from insect pests, and perhaps like many a bibiophie the bugs like old books best.
 The bookworm was abroad as early as the days of Aristotle. who speaks of bookworms like scorpions without a tail" description which obtains today for a little creature which the Germans call 'Bucherseorpion: The Roman Horace spoke of the "groveing book worm and did the Latin poets, Mar tial and Lucan In 1865 R. Hooke, in his "Micrographia," describes "a small white silver shining worm or moth which found much conversant among books and papers. and is supposed to be that which corrodes and eats holes thro' the leaves and covers" Hooke was evidently des- cribing the Lepisma Saccharina or '.Sil- yer Fish, which rates as a formidable enemy of books
 The "bookworm'' parexcellence is a very common insect. It is the sitodrepa panicea or drug store beetle. and is just as great d pest to the druggist as to the librarian. Its larva, which does the dam age. rarely exceeds one-eighth of an inch
 in length, and generally does not exceed one-twenty-fifth. In Europe 1t is called anobium paniceum, and this bug and closely related members of it's family are the most voracious of all the tribe of in- sects that eat books. It lays it's eggs in the leather or cloth of the binding, and when the larva hatches it begins to bore, and in all directions. Throught the cover and the paper go minute tunnels, and as the larva may live and bore for several years, even a whole shelf Of books, long untouched and uncared for. may be utterly ruined. and the pages cut up like the meshes of sieve. Doctor O'Connor found the sitodrepa panicea at Work Tn WdSnlnStOn ana New 1oFh, ana in all captured thirty specimens, in books ancient and modem, under covers of board, leather and parchment, No ''pook- worms have been caught at the Kansas City public library, but the library con tains specimens of the bugs handiworlS. Another of the many bugs that eat books is the ptinus brunneus or brown spider beetle. It is sometimes called the book-beetle Doctor Simmer says: ''They usually operate in leather bound or half bound volumes by boring galleries along in the leather. They usually bore along quite under the surface of the leather cutting it almost through; occasionally small round hole penetrates through the leather to the outer surface"
 The larva of the dermestes lardarius, or larder beetle, is a mscropic hedge hog, and together with several other spe- cies of dermestes are especially destruc- tive of leather bindings.
 | A well known American bug is. the Periplaneta Americana, or common cock roach, which together with four others of it's relatives, is of undoubted bookish