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OTHER VERMIN.
BESIDES the worm I do not think there is any insect enemy of books worth description.

The domestic black-beetle, or cockroach, is far too modern an introduction to our country to have done much harm, though he will sometimes nibble the binding of books, especially if they rest upon the floor.
Not so fortunate, however, are our American cousins, for in the "Library Journal" for September, 1879, Mr.Weston Flint gives an account of a dreadful little pest which commits great havoc upon the cloth bindings of the New York libraries.

It is a small black-beetle or cockroach, called by scientists "Blatta germanica" and by others the "Croton Bug." Unlike our household pest, whose home is the kitchen, and whose bashfulness loves secrecy and the dark hours, this misgrown flat species, of which it would take two to make a medium-sized English specimen, has gained in impudence what it has lost in size, fearing neither light nor noise, neither man nor beast.

In the old English Bible of 1551, we read in Psalm xci, 5, "Thou shalt not nede to be afraied for eny Bugges by night." This verse falls unheeded on the ear of the Western librarian who fears his "bugs" both night and day, for they crawl over everything in broad sunlight, infesting and infecting each corner and cranny of the bookshelves they choose as their home.