the following to be about the truth:--

There are several kinds of caterpillar and grub, which eat into books,
those with legs are the larvae of moths; those without legs, or rather
with rudimentary legs, are grubs and turn to beetles.

It is not known whether any species of caterpillar or grub can live
generation after generation upon books alone, but several sorts of
wood-borers, and others which live upon vegetable refuse, will attack
paper, especially if attracted in the first place by the real wooden
boards in which it was the custom of the old book-binders to clothe
their volumes. In this belief, some country librarians object to opening
the library windows lest the enemy should fly in from the neighbouring
woods, and rear a brood of worms. Anyone, indeed, who has seen a hole
in a filbert, or a piece of wood riddled by dry rot, will recognize a
similarity of appearance in the channels made by these insect enemies.

Among the paper-eating species are:--

1. The "Anobium." Of this beetle there are varieties, viz.:
"A. pertinax," "A. eruditus," and "A. paniceum." In the larval
state they are grubs, just like those found, in nuts; in this stage
they are too much alike to be distinguished from one another.
They feed on old dry wood, and often infest bookcases and shelves.
They eat the wooden boards of old books, and so pass into the paper
where they make long holes quite round, except when they work
in a slanting direction, when the holes appear to be oblong.
They will thus pierce through several volumes in succession,
Peignot, the well-known bibliographer, having found 27 volumes
so pierced in a straight line by one worm, a miracle of gluttony,