Publisher's Synopsis
Father O'Conor is a poet, who set out to answer these questions: Is the "bookworm" a fact in nature? What is it like? What does it do? What can be told about it? And "they are all answered." The book is in two parts, the first telling about the history of bookworms in literature and the second about their work in books -- in libraries. The existence of bookworms has often been doubted and even ridiculed, but Father O'Conor has seen 72 specimens with his own eyes. "No astronomer, searching the heavens with his lenses, and feeling the throb of joy as the light of a new star breaks on his vision, felt a keener joy" than that experienced by the author when he discovered his first bookworm in the library of Georgetown University. To some authors the bookworm is an insect, to others a bug. to still others a bird making a crowing noise "like a cock unto his mate," and to Father O'Conor, on looking at the Attaginus pellio, "I could but compare it in shape to a miniature whale." The theory of Mr. Blades that the bookworm will not touch our adulterated modern paper is shown to be an error, for our author has found him in the New York World for 1868, and in the Scientific American for 1875.
In conclusion, "the facts about bookworms are these" "There are bookworms, the real living insects. They are not a thing of the past, but are doing mischief to-day. They eat not only old books, but all books; not only vegetable fibre but any kind of paper. They are not known. They revel in libraries. They destroy there, where they are not suspected, where the suggestion of their presence would be scoffed at." There is an appendix containing entomological notes by Prof. C. V. Riley, of the U. S. Entomological Commission. The date of the note is 1881. One of the suggestions of Prof. Riley for ridding books of bookworms is that they (the books) be placed in a watertight box and then sunk into hot water. Father O'Conor's little book contains 12 illustrations, nine of them being specimens of bookworms. The book is not only well worth a place on library shelves, but it is well worth reading by the librarian.
--Library Journal, Volume 23
