Aldis, M.A.
Cambridge: at the University Press 1916
of fire is the most formidable, whether it be by violence, as in
the case of the Strassburg library in 1870, and the deliberate
burning, by the same brutish hands, of the University Library
of Louvain so recently as 1914, or by the more civilized
though not less destructive agency of accidental
conflagration. Of the latter there are many instances, from
the wholesale destruction of books in the Great Fire of
London in 1666, and the irreparable damage to the
Cottonian manuscripts in 1731, down to the partial
destruction of the Turin library in 1904 and the burning of the
New York State Library at Albany in 1911. But books are
difficult material to make a thorough end of by fire. Church
and state authorities discovered this when they endeavored
to destroy heretical books by means of public bonfires, and,
However, the destruction which fire fails to accomplish may readily be completed by its twin enemy water, for it is by
no means an unknown experience that greater damage has been done to books by the water with which the flames
have been attacked than by the fire itself.
Water, in the more rarefied and insidious form of damp has been, probably, an even greater agency in the ruin of
books. In an acute form damp will in time bring a volume to such a point of decay that it crumbles away in powder; in a
lesser degree mildew may ruin the binding and irremediably stain the leaves; while even a slight amount of dampness
will favor the ravages of bookworms. These pests, more evident in their tracks than in their persons, are not often
found except among books which are subjected to a somewhat humid atmosphere and are seldom disturbed. They
are the larvae of a small beetle belonging to the genus Anobium, and have the appearance of a whitish maggot about
five-sixteenths of an inch in length, with a dark brown head. In their silent progress some bore holes in all directions
through the volume, while others confine their industry to the wooden boards of the covers which they gnaw to
powder. They shew a discriminating taste in paper, for their attentions are conferred mainly upon books of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; they seldom risk their digestions by attacks on the modern stuff which does duty for
paper. When they are discovered to be in possession their activity may be discouraged by opening the book freely so
as to disturb them in their tunnels. The book should then be treated with benzine or formalin, and shut up in a box for
a few days before being aired off and returned to the shelf.
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