[Transcriber’s Note: The line to the right is approximately ½ inch (1cm) long in the original.]
A curious fact is that the grubs of beetles such as Anobium and Xestobium (or other closely allied kinds) are not arrested in their tunnelling by soft metal. They cannot tackle iron plate or brass sheeting, but they will penetrate tinfoil and, what is more astonishing, lead plate and leaden waterpipes. Specimens showing such perforations are in the museums of Oxford and London, and I have received an account of a lead pipe packed in wood in the wall of a house being perforated by these beetle-grubs. Once at work on the wood, “the straightforward intentions” of the grub are not to be diverted by such an obstacle as lead: it goes straight on through the lead as it would through the cover of a book or a knot in the wood.
Fig. 64.—The book-louse, or Atropos divinatoria, a soft, cream-coloured, wingless insect smaller than a flea. It is believed by some observers to be capable of making sounds like the ticking of a watch.
I have sometimes been asked to give advice as to the best method of destroying the furniture worm or grub. If the piece of furniture (or its pieces) can without injury be “baked” in a hot chamber for twenty-four hours, at a temperature a little above that of boiling water, that is the easiest method of destroying the pest. Or, again, I should suggest placing the piece of furniture in a refrigerating chamber for a week or two. If neither of these methods can be used, the piece of furniture should be placed in a very hot room, and creosote or bisulphide of carbon or solution of cyanide of potassium should be injected with a very fine-nosed syringe into the little circular holes of the burrows on the surface of the wood; then the piece of furniture must be at once exposed to the cold, which will cause the air to be drawn into the burrows and diffuse the volatile poison within. The “worm holes” on the surface should, as soon as the piece of furniture is quite cold, be closed by melted paraffin. If the piece of wood which it is desired to “cure” will stand submersion in water for a few minutes, and is not larger than a cricket bat, it is, of course, easy, by first warming it through and then plunging it into water containing corrosive sublimate or other poison, fairly to impregnate the burrows, and make an end of the beetles and their grubs. Painting is the common and approved means of protecting wood against these attacks, and in some positions metal sheathing is used. The method most largely used for protecting wood in the open air against “worm” and “mould” is that of forcing creosote into its pores—an improvement on the old system of painting with coal tar. A more expensive but beautiful method of protecting wood is to force hard paraffin in a melted condition by pressure into the pores. The wood becomes wonderfully firm and waterproof. Neither damp and mould, nor boring insect, nor shrimp can then penetrate it. This method was introduced some years ago, but I do not know whether it has been largely used.
[XXXIX]
CHRISTMAS FARE
Most English people who can afford it eat more than is good for them on Christmas Day, and consider it more or less of a religious duty to do so, even though they shrink from the ordeal. It is an interesting tendency, and at the same time one readily explained. Primitive men, and our own remote ancestors, had few, if any, joys greater than those afforded by an abundant meal of roasted meat. When a great beast such as a mammoth was taken in a skilfully-prepared pitfall, and slaughtered, the whole tribe of palaeolithic huntsmen assembled and gorged themselves with its flesh, which, it seems fairly certain, they cooked on open fires. The strongest seized the most and ate the most, and were able to bear up the longest in something like full vigour until such time as another big beast should be killed, and another opportunity for “gorging” should arise, when they would naturally again get the largest share, having eaten most on the previous occasion, and so being least famished. Hence the belief that a great appetite is a fine thing, and that the more you can eat, the stronger and better you are, is one of the deeply-laid traditions of humanity which civilised men have inherited from barbarians, and are only slowly commencing to criticise and to put aside. The negroes who accompany European sportsmen in Central Africa gorge themselves when elephants are killed, and a recent account tells of the serious illness and danger to an expedition caused by the whole countryside flocking to the carcasses of twenty-three elephants killed by an ivory-hunter. The blacks continued to eat the flesh of the elephants for three weeks, when it had become decidedly “high,” and many died, whilst others took weeks to recover, in consequence. The notion of “festivity,” which, especially in England, has been, even in recent times, that of eating and drinking to excess, is prehistoric and barbaric. Serious physiologists and medical men have expressed the opinion that we shall never arrive at a satisfactory mode of nourishing ourselves so as to take neither too much nor what is in itself injurious to health, until the practice of seeking gaiety and celebrating a memory or honouring a friend or friends by means of profuse eating (often followed by wearisome speeches) has given place to a mode of rejoicing which is more likely to produce hilarity and lightness of heart, and less certain to be followed by painful and injurious results. We certainly eat less and drink less of intoxicating liquors than we did, but there is, it seems, still room for improvement.