the Roman obedience, like that wonderful
Ichthiobibliophage (pardon me, Professor Owen) who, in the year 1626,
swallowed three Puritanical treatises of John Frith, the Protestant
martyr. No wonder, after such a meal, he was soon caught, and became
famous in the annals of literature. The following is the title of a
little book issued upon the occasion: "Vox Piscis, or the Book-Fish
containing Three Treatises, which were found in the belly of a Cod-Fish
in Cambridge Market on Midsummer Eve, AD 1626." Lowndes says (see
under "Tracey,") "great was the consternation at Cambridge upon the
publication of this work."

Rats and mice, however, are occasionally very destructive, as the
following anecdote will show: Two centuries ago, the library of the Dean
and Chapter of Westminster was kept in the Chapter House, and repairs
having become necessary in that building, a scaffolding was erected
inside, the books being left on their shelves. One of the holes made in
the wall for a scaffold-pole was selected by a pair of rats for their
family residence. Here they formed a nest for their young ones by
descending to the library shelves and biting away the leaves of various
books. Snug and comfortable was the little household, until, one day,
the builder's men having finished, the poles were removed, and--alas!
for the rats--the hole was closed up with bricks and cement. Buried
alive, the father and mother, with five or six of their offspring, met
with a speedy death, and not until a few years ago, when a restoration
of the Chapter House was effected, was the rat grave opened again for a
scaffold pole, and all their skeletons and their nest discovered. Their
bones and paper fragments of the nest may now be seen in a glass case in
the Chapter House, some of the fragments being attributed to books from
the press of Caxton. This is not the case, although there are pieces of
very early black-letter books not now to be found in the Abbey library,
including little bits of the famous Queen Elizabeth's Prayer book, with
woodcuts, 1568.

A friend sends me the following incident: "A few years since, some rats
made nests in the trees surrounding my house; from thence they jumped on
to some flat roofing, and so made their way down a chimney into a
room where I kept books. A number of these, with parchment backs, they
entirely destroyed, as well as some half-dozen books whole bound in
parchment."

Another friend informs me that in the Natural Hist