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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: at the bottom of the pages. This is a most unusual occurrence,
and is probably the work of the larva of "Dermestes vulpinus,"
a garden beetle, which is very voracious, and eats any kind
of dry ligneous rubbish.
The scarcity of edible books of the present century has been mentioned.
One result of the extensive adulteration of modern paper is that the worm
will not touch it. His instinct forbids him to eat the china clay,
the bleaches, the plaster of Paris, the sulphate of barytes, the scores
of adulterants now used to mix with the fibre, and, so far, the wise pages
of the old literature are, in the race against Time with the modern rubbish,
heavily handicapped. Thanks to the general interest taken in old
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