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:--

1. The "Anobium." Of this beetle there are varieties, viz.: "A.
pertinax," "A. eruditus," and "A. paniceum." In the larval state they
are grubs, just like those found, in nuts; in this stage they are too
much alike to be distinguished from one another. They feed on old dry
wood, and often infest bookcases and shelves. They eat the wooden boards
of old books, and so pass into the paper where they make long holes
quite round, except when they work in a slanting direction, when the
holes appear to be oblong. They will thus pierce through several volumes
in succession, Peignot, the well-known bibliographer, having found
27 volumes so pierced in a straight line by one worm, a miracle of
gluttony, the story of which, for myself, I receive "_cum grano salis_."
After a certain time the larva changes into a pupa, and then emerges as
a small brown beetle.

2. "Oecophora."--This larva is similar in size to that of Anobium, b