Black-beetle in American libraries.--germanica.--Bug Bible.--Lepisma. --Codfish.--Skeletons of Rats in Abbey library, Westminster.--Niptus hololeucos.--Tomicus Typographicus.--House flies injure books. CHAPTER VIII. BOOKBINDERS. A good binding gives pleasure.--Deadly effects of the "plough" as used by binders.--Not confined to bye-gone times.--Instances of injury.--De Rome, a good binder but a great cropper.--Books "hacked."--Bad lettering--Treasures in book-covers.--Books washed, sized, and mended.--"Cases" often Preferable to re-binding. CHAPTER IX. COLLECTORS. Bagford the biblioclast.--Illustrations torn from MSS.--Title-pages torn from books.--Rubens, his engraved titles.--Colophons torn out of books.--Lincoln Cathedral--Dr. Dibdin's Nosegay.--Theurdanck.--Fragments of MSS.--Some libraries almost useless.--Pepysian.--Teylerian.--Sir Thomas Phillipps. CHAPTER X. SERVANTS AND CHILDREN. Library invaded for the purpose of dusting.--Spring clean.---Dust to be got rid of.--Ways of doing so.--Carefulness praised.--Bad nature of certain books--Metal clasps and rivets.--How to dust.--Children often injure books.--Examples.--Story of boys in a country library. POSTSCRIPTUM. Anecdote of book-sale in Derbyshire. CONCLUSION. The care that should be taken of books.--Enjoyment derived from them. ILLUSTRATIONS. SERVANT USING A "CAXTON" TO LIGHT THE FIRE --- _Frontispiece_, PIRATES THROWING LIBRARY OVER-BOARD ---------- page 19 FRIARS AND THEIR ASS-LOAD -------------------- 35 BRUSHING CLOTHES IN A COLLEGE LIBRARY -------- 45 BOOKWORMS ------------------------------------ 73 RATS DESTROYING BOOKS ------------------------ 99 HOUSEHOLD FLY-DAMAGE ------------------------- 102 BOYS RAMPANT IN LIBRARY ---------------------- 141 THE ENEMIES OF BOOKS. CHAPTER I. FIRE. THERE are many of the forces of Nature which tend to injure Books; but among them all not one has been half so destructive as Fire. It would be tedious to write out a bare list only of the numerous libraries and bibliographical treasures which, in one way or another, have been seized by the Fire-king as his own. Chance conflagrations, fanatic incendiarism, judicial bonfires, and even household stoves have, time after time, thinned the treasures as well as the rubbish of past ages, until, probably, not one thousandth part of the books that have been are still extant. This destruction cannot, however, be reckoned as all loss; for had not the "cleansing fires" removed mountains of rubbish from our midst, strong destructive measures would have become a necessity from sheer want of space in which to store so many volumes.