Bookworm

Bookworm, any grub which feeds on the paper of books. The name more especially belongs to the larva of an anobium (Anobium pertinax, A. eruditum, &c.), a small coleopterous insect, which is one of the Death-watch (q.v.) insects; though the larva of Eeophora pseudospicella, a small brown moth, seems to have nearly an equal claim to it. The latter much resembles the anobium, save that it has six legs, while the anobium has none. Most people are familiar with the effects of the bookworm's ravages; but the creatures are extremely rare in this country, especially since so many chemical substances have been introduced into the manufacture of paper. In Southern Europe, the book-eating anobium is still common enough. It is not unlike the little grub found in hazel nuts—has a soft body with a horny brown head and strong jaws, and readily succumbs to exposure. As it usually attacks from the boards inwards, the interior pages of a book are generally safe from its ravages; though M. Peignot asserts he found twenty-seven volumes standing in a row, pierced from end to end by a single worm-tunnel, and Mr Blades has known this happen with at least two volumes. In America, books in libraries, though free from the ravages of the bookworm, are infested and damaged by a small cockroach—the Croton Bug, or Blatta Germanica. Probably several kinds of caterpillars of moths, and grubs of beetles, injure books more or less. See BORING-BEETLES, BOOK-LICE; Blades' Enemies of Books (new ed. 1888); N. and Q., May 1885; Booklore (1886); Antiquary, vol. x.; and E. A. Butler, Our Household Insects (1893).