Nor can we reckon the Codfish as very dangerous to literature, unless,
indeed, he be of the Roman obedience, like that wonderful
Ichthiobibliophage (pardon me, Professor Owen) who, in the year 1626,
swallowed three Puritanical treatises of John Frith, the Protestant
martyr. No wonder, after such a meal, he was soon caught, and became
famous in the annals of literature. The following is the title of a
little book issued upon the occasion: "Vox Piscis, or the Book-Fish
containing Three Treatises, which were found in the belly of a Cod-Fish
in Cambridge Market on Midsummer Eve, AD 1626." Lowndes says (see
under "Tracey,") "great was the consternation at Cambridge upon the
publication of this work."

Rats and mice, however, are occasionally very destructive,
as the following anecdote will show: Two centuries ago, the library
of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster was kept in the Chapter House,
and repairs having become necessary in that building, a scaffolding
was erected inside, the books being left on their shelves.
One of the holes made in the wall for a scaffold-pole was
selected by a pair of rats for their family residence.
Here they formed a nest for their young ones by descending to
the library shelves and biting away the leaves of various books.
Snug and comfortable was the little household, until, one day,
the builder's men having finished, the poles were removed, and--
alas! for the rats--the hole was closed up with bricks and cement.
Buried alive, the father and mother, with five or six of their
offspring, met with a speedy death, and not until a few years ago,
when a restoration of the Chapter House was effected, was the rat
grave opened again for a scaffold pole, and all their skeletons
and their nest discovered. Their bones and paper fragments