Libraries are invaluable resources, documenting significant events that have shaped human history. However, the preservation of old books is severely threatened by insects commonly referred to as ...bookworms. In this study, a sample of infested books in a historic library in Taiwan was randomly selected and examined. An anobiid book-boring beetle,
Pic, 1914 (Coleoptera: Ptinidae) was identified as the major bookworm species present. To facilitate its identification, both adults and larvae of
are redescribed, with emphasis on its ultramorphological characteristics as revealed by scanning electronic microscopy. Furthermore, an undescribed parasitoid wasp in the Bethylidae was discovered in the frass, holes and tunnels created by
The new species,
sp. nov. is described, and we suggest that it probably uses
as host.
A fascinating look at the myriad enemies of the printed book, from fire, to neglect, to children, to the bookworm, to plain old ignorance. A passionate litany against all who would see printed ...literature destroyed, written by English printer and bibliographer William Blades.
Insect bookworms were a little-known interest of Sir William Osler and F. P. Henry. Each man wrote an article on the subject, Osler's appearing thirteen years after that of Henry. Several unpublished ...communications regarding Osler's interest in bookworms are discussed. A recently-discovered 1903 inscription to Henry demonstrates Osler's early interest in bookworms and suggests that Henry may have been an important influence in generating that interest.
Many Old English riddles of the Exeter Book delight in sonic play, but a small number luxuriate instead in provocative silences. This article brings together contemporary and medieval sound theory to ...examine silence in the riddles, arguing that attitudes to silence were ambivalent rather than negative. At times, the silence of the suffering being is potentially an act of resistance to the craft of the riddles, as well as an invitation to listen for other voices silenced by Anglo-Saxon culture. The final section of the article reveals that the destructive consumption of the bookworm of Riddle 47 is not merely the act of a bad monastic reader, but instead produces "signal noise," which generates new content, new art, and new ways of reading Anglo-Saxon literature in which the loss of the past is celebrated, rather than lamented.
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