If the least bit of butter or grease should touch a suit, one may depend upon it that unless it is put in a roach-proof trunk the roach will find that spot, and in the morning a hole will be eaten through. They devour wool as a horse eats hay; but they will leave both wool and grease for the starch contained in cloth bookbindings. They show a decided preference for new books, the starch being softer in these. If, in a moment of supreme folly, one should leave a book uncovered on a table over night, he will find it in the morning with several spots upon it the size of a dime, where the starch and colour are eaten out and the bare gray threads exposed. This happened to my _Memoirs of Tennyson_; both volumes were badly defaced in one night. Of course one will cover with heavy paper—when he _has_ the paper—every book in his library, or, at least, those that are not already spoiled by the time he gets round to them; but books so covered lose their identity, like friends in masquerade. Besides, books thus kept in paper in that damp atmosphere will soon be covered with mould. If one adds to this that while roaches or mould are destroying the outside of his books white ants are doing their best to get at the inside, he will see that the obstacles incident to literary pursuits in Africa are well-nigh insuperable. I cannot dismiss the white ant with this passing notice, for it also is one of the pests of Africa; indeed, there are many who regard it as the worst of the African pests. It is characteristic of the impudent hypocrisy of this stealthy insect that it should somehow get itself called a _white ant_, when, as a matter of fact, it is not an ant at all, and is not white. It is a dirty-yellow _termite_, a soft-bodied insect, in appearance like a very small piece of impure tallow. It is commonest in Africa, but is also found in South America, India and Ceylon, and one species, it is said, is even found as far north as Bordeaux. The admirable and interesting features of the white ant (and it has some) have nowhere been better described than in Henry Drummond’s charming chapter in _Tropical Africa_.